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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Martie the Unconquered, by Kathleen Norris
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Martie the Unconquered
+
+Author: Kathleen Norris
+
+Posting Date: August 1, 2009 [EBook #4392]
+Release Date: August, 2003
+First Posted: January 22, 2002
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARTIE THE UNCONQUERED ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team. HTML version by Al Haines.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE WORKS OF KATHLEEN NORRIS
+
+
+
+MARTIE THE UNCONQUERED
+
+VOLUME VIII
+
+
+
+
+
+AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED TO
+
+JOSEPH SEXTON THOMPSON
+
+
+
+BOOK I
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+At about four o'clock on a windy, warm September afternoon, four girls
+came out of the post-office of Monroe, California. They had loitered on
+their way in, consciously wasting time; they had spent fifteen minutes
+in the dark and dirty room upon an absolutely unnecessary errand, and
+now they sauntered forth into the village street keenly aware that the
+afternoon was not yet waning, and disheartened by the slow passage of
+time. At five they would go to Bonestell's drug store, and sit in a row
+at the soda counter, and drink effervescent waters pleasingly mingled
+with fruit syrups and an inferior quality of ice cream. Five o'clock
+was the hour for "sodas," neither half-past four nor half-past five was
+at all the same thing in the eyes of Monroe's young people. After that
+they would wander idly toward the bridge, and separate; Grace Hawkes
+turning toward the sunset for another quarter of a mile, Rose Ransome
+opening the garden gate of the pretty, vine-covered cottage near the
+bridge, and the Monroe girls, Sarah and Martha, in a desperate hurry
+now, flying up the twilight quiet of North Main Street to the long
+picket fence, the dark, tree-shaded garden, and the shabby side-doorway
+of the old Monroe house.
+
+Three of these girls met almost every afternoon, going first to each
+other's houses, and later wandering down for the mail, for some trivial
+errand at drug store or dry-goods store, and for the inevitable ices.
+Rose Ransome was not often with them, for Rose was just a little
+superior in several ways to her present companions, and frequently
+spent the afternoon practising on her violin, or driving, or walking
+with the Parker girls and Florence Frost, who hardly recognized the
+existence of Grace Hawkes and the Monroes. The one bank in Monroe was
+the Frost and Parker Bank; there were Frost Street and Parker Street,
+the Frost Building and the Parker Building. May and Ida Parker and
+Florence Frost had gone to Miss Bell's Private School when they were
+little, and then to Miss Spencer's School in New York.
+
+But even all this might not have accounted for the exclusive social
+instincts of the young ladies if both families had not been very rich.
+As it was, with prosperous fathers and ambitious mothers, with
+well-kept, old-fashioned homes, pews in church, allowances of so many
+hundred dollars a year, horses to ride and drive, and servants to wait
+upon them, the three daughters of these two prominent families
+considered themselves as obviously better than their neighbours, and
+bore themselves accordingly. Cyrus Frost and Graham Parker had come to
+California as young men, in the seventies; had cast in their lot with
+little Monroe, and had grown rich with the town. It was a credit to the
+state now; they had found it a mere handful of settlers' cabins, with
+one stately, absurd mansion standing out among them, in a plantation of
+young pepper and willow and locust and eucalyptus trees.
+
+This was the home of Malcolm Monroe, turreted, mansarded, generously
+filled with the glass windows that had come in a sailing vessel around
+the Horn. Incongruous, pretentious, awkward, it might to a discerning
+eye have suggested its owner, who was then not more than thirty years
+old; a tall, silent, domineering man. He was reputed rich, and Miss
+Elizabeth--or "Lily"--Price, a pretty Eastern girl who visited the
+Frosts in the winter of 1878, was supposed to be doing very well for
+herself when she married him, and took her bustles and chignons, her
+blonde hair with its "French twist," and her scalloped, high-buttoned
+kid shoes to the mansion on North Main Street.
+
+Now the town had grown to several hundred times its old size; schools,
+churches, post-office, shops, a box factory, a lumber yard, and a
+winery had come to Monroe. There was the Town Hall, a plain wooden
+building, and, at the shabby outskirts of South Main Street, a jail.
+The Interurban Trolley "looped" the town once every hour.
+
+All these had helped to make Cyrus Frost and Graham Parker rich. They,
+like Malcolm Monroe, had married, and had built themselves homes. They
+had invested and re-invested their money; they had given their children
+advantages, according to their lights. Now, in their early fifties,
+they were a power in the town, and they felt for it a genuine affection
+and pride, a loyalty that was unquestioning and sincere. In the kindly
+Western fashion these two were now accorded titles; Cyrus, who had
+served in the Civil War, was "Colonel Frost," and to Graham, who had
+been a lawyer, was given the titular dignity of being "Judge Parker."
+
+Malcolm Monroe kept pace with neither his old associates nor with the
+times. His investments were timid and conservative, his faith in the
+town that had been named for his father frequently wavered. He was in
+everything a reactionary, refusing to see that neither the sheep of the
+old Spanish settlers nor the gold of the early pioneers meant so much
+to this fragrant, sun-washed table land as did wheat and grapes and
+apple trees. Monroe came to laugh at "old Monroe's" pigheadedness. He
+fought the town on every question for improvements, as it came up. The
+bill for pavements, the bill for sewerage, the bill for street lights,
+the high school bill, found in him an enemy as the years went by. He
+denounced these innovations bitterly. When the level of Main Street was
+raised four feet, "old Monroe" almost went out of his senses, and the
+home site, gloomily shut in now by immense trees, and a whole block
+square, was left four feet below the street level, so that there must
+be built three or four wooden steps at all the gates. The Monroe girls
+resented this peculiarity of their home, but never said so to their
+father.
+
+Rose Ransome, the pretty, neat little daughter of a pretty, neat little
+widow, was cultivated eagerly by the Monroes, and patronized kindly by
+the Frost and Parker girls. She had lived all of her twenty years in
+Monroe, and was too conscientious and amiable to snub the girls
+supposedly beneath her, and too merry, ladylike, and entertaining to be
+quite ignored by the richer group. So she brightly, obligingly, and
+gratefully lunched and drove, read and walked, and practised music with
+May and Ida and Florence, when they wanted her, and when they did not,
+or when Eastern friends visited them, or there was for some reason no
+empty seat in the surrey, she turned back to the company of Grace
+Hawkes and of Sally and Martie Monroe. Rose admitted frankly to her
+mother that with the latter group she had "more fun," but that with her
+more elevated friends she enjoyed, of course, "nicer times."
+Politically she steered a diplomatic middle course between the two,
+implying, with equal readiness, that she only associated with the poor
+Monroes because Uncle Ben made her, or that she accepted invitations
+from the Frost and Parker faction simply to be amiable.
+
+Sally Monroe, innocent, simple, unexacting at twenty-one, really
+believed Rose to be the sweetly frank and artless person she seemed,
+but Martie, two years younger, had her times of absolutely detesting
+Rose. Sally was never jealous, but Martie burned with a fierce young
+jealousy of all life: of Rose, with her dainty frocks and her rich
+friends, her curly hair and her violin; of Florence Frost's riding
+horse; of Ida Parker's glib French; of her own brother, Leonard Monroe,
+with his male independence; of the bare-armed women who leaped on the
+big, flat-backed horses in the circus; of the very Portuguese children
+who rode home asleep of a summer afternoon, in fragrant loads of
+alfalfa.
+
+To-day she was vaguely smarting at Grace's news: Grace was going to
+work. She, like the Monroe girls, had often discussed the possibilities
+of this step, but opportunities were not many, and the idle, pleasant
+years drifted by with no change. But Ellie Hawkes, Grace's big sister,
+who had kept books in the box factory for three years, was to be
+married now; a step down for Ellie--for her "friend" was only Terry
+Castle, a brawny, ignorant giant employed by the Express Company--but a
+step up for Grace. She would be a wage-earner; her pretty, weak face
+grew animated at the thought, and her shrill voice more shrill.
+
+Martie Monroe had no real desire to work in the box factory, to walk
+daily the ugly half mile that lay between it and her home, to join the
+ranks of toilers that filed through the poorer region of town every
+morning. But like all growing young things she felt a desperate,
+undefined need. She could not know that self-expression is as necessary
+to natures like hers as breath is to young bodies. She could only grope
+and yearn and struggle in the darkness of her soul.
+
+She was nineteen, a tall, strong girl, already fully developed, and
+handsome in a rather dull and heavy way. Her hands and feet were
+beautifully made, her hair, although neglected, of a wonderful silky
+bronze, and her skin naturally of the clear creamy type that sometimes
+accompanies such hair. But Martie ruined her skin by injudicious
+eating; she could not resist sweets; natural indolence, combined with
+the idle life she led, helped to make her too fat. Now and then, in the
+express office, in the afternoon, the girls got on the big freight
+scales, and this was always a mortification to Martie. Terry Castle and
+Joe Hawkes would laugh as they adjusted the weights, and Martie always
+tried to laugh, too, but she did not think it funny. Martie might have
+seemed to her world merely a sweet, big, good-natured tomboy, growing
+into an eager, amusing, ignorant young woman, too fond of sleeping and
+eating.
+
+But there was another Martie--a sensitive, ambitious Martie--who
+despised idleness, dependence, and inaction; who longed to live a
+thousand lives--to conquer all the world; a Martie who was one day a
+great singer, one day a wartime nurse, one day a millionaire's
+beautiful bride, the mother of five lovely children, all carefully
+named. She would waken from her dreams almost bewildered, blinking at
+Sally or at her mother in the surprised fashion that sometimes made
+folk call Martie stupid, humbly enough she thought of herself as
+stupid, too. She never suspected that she was really "dreaming true,"
+that the power and the glory lay waiting for the touch of her heart and
+hand and brain. She never suspected that she was to Rose and Grace and
+Sally what a clumsy young swan would be in a flock of bustling and
+competent ducks. Martie did not know, yet, where her kingdom lay, how
+should she ever dream that she was to find it?
+
+Rose was going back to stay with her cousin in Berkeley to-morrow, it
+was understood, and so had to get home early this afternoon. Rose, as
+innocent as a butterfly of ambition or of the student's zeal, had
+finished her first year in the State University and was to begin her
+second to-morrow.
+
+Monroe's shabby Main Street seemed less interesting than ever when Rose
+had tripped away. A gusty breeze was blowing fitfully, whisking bits of
+straw and odds and ends of paper about. The watering cart went by,
+leaving a cool wake of shining mud. Here and there a surrey, loaded
+with stout women in figured percales, and dusty, freckled children,
+started on its trip from Main Street back to some outlying ranch.
+
+As the three girls, arms linked, loitered across the square, Dr. Ben
+Scott--who was Rose Ransome's mother's cousin and was regarded as an
+uncle--came out of the Court House and walked toward his buggy. The
+dreaming white mare roused as she heard his voice, and the old
+brown-and-white setter sprang into the seat beside him.
+
+"Howdy, girls!" said the old man, his big loose figure bulging
+grotesquely over the boundaries of the seat. "Father pretty well?"
+
+"Well enough, Doc' Ben, but not pretty!" Martie said, laughing. The
+doctor's eyes twinkled.
+
+"They put a tongue in your head, Martie, sure enough!" he said,
+gathering up the reins.
+
+"It was all they did put, then!" Martie giggled.
+
+The girls all liked Doc' Ben. A widower, rich enough now to take only
+what practice he pleased, simple in his tastes, he lived with his old
+servant, his horse and cow, his dog and cat, chickens and bees, pigeons
+and rabbits, in a comfortable, shabby establishment in an unfashionable
+part of town. Monroe described him as a "regular character." His
+jouncing, fat figure--with tobacco ash spilled on his spotted vest, and
+stable mud on his high-laced boots--was familiar in all her highways
+and byways. His mellow voice, shot with humorous undertones even when
+he was serious, touched with equal readiness upon Plato, the habits of
+bees, the growth of fungus, fashions, Wordsworth, the Civil War, or the
+construction of chimneys. He was something of a philosopher, something
+of a poet, something of a reformer.
+
+Martie, watching him out of sight, said to herself that she really must
+go down soon and see old Dr. Ben, poke among his old books, feed his
+pigeons, and scold him for his untidy ways. The girl's generous
+imagination threw a veil of romance over his life; she told Sally that
+he was like some one in an English story.
+
+After he had gone, the girls idled into the Town Library, a large room
+with worn linoleum on the floor, and with level sunlight streaming in
+the dusty windows. At the long table devoted to magazines a few readers
+were sitting; others hovered over the table where books just returned
+were aligned; and here and there, before the dim bookcases that lined
+the walls, still others loitered, now and then picking a book from the
+shelves, glancing at it, and restoring it to its place. The room was
+warm and close with the smell of old books. The whisking of pages, and
+occasionally a sibilant whisper, were its only sounds. From the ceiling
+depended signs, bearing the simple command: "Silence"; but this did not
+prevent the girls from whispering to the energetic, gray-haired woman
+who presided at the desk.
+
+"Hello, girls!" said Miss Fanny Breck cheerfully, in the low tone she
+always used in the library. "Want anything to read? You don't? What are
+you reading, Martie?"
+
+"I'm reading 'Idylls of the King,'" Sally said.
+
+"I've got 'Only the Governess,'" added Grace.
+
+"I didn't ask either of you," Miss Breck said with the brisk amused air
+of correction that made the girls a little afraid of her. "It's Martie
+here I'm interested in. I'm going to scold her, too. Are you reading
+that book I gave you, Martie?"
+
+Martie, as Grace and Sally turned away, raised smiling eyes. But at
+Miss Fanny's keen, kindly look she was smitten with a sudden curious
+inclination toward tears. She was keenly sensitive, and she felt an
+undeserved rebuke.
+
+"Don't like it?" asked the librarian, disposing of an interruption with
+that casual ease that always fascinated Martie. To see Miss Fanny seize
+four books from the hands that brought them into her range of vision,
+flip open the four covers with terrific speed, manipulate various paper
+slips and rubber stamps with energy and certainty, vigorously copy
+certain mysterious letters and numbers, toss the discarded books into a
+large basket at her elbow and then, for the first time, as she handed
+the selected books to the applicant, glance up with her smile and
+whispered "Good afternoon," was a real study in efficiency.
+
+"I don't understand it," Martie smiled.
+
+"Did you read it?" persisted the older woman.
+
+"Well--not much." Martie had, in fact, hardly opened the book, an
+excellent collection of some twenty essays for girls under the general
+title "Choosing a Life Work."
+
+"Listen. Why don't you study the Cutter system, and familiarize
+yourself a little with this work, and come in here with me?" asked Miss
+Fanny, in her firm, pushing voice.
+
+"When?" Martie asked, considering.
+
+"Well--I can't say when. I'm no oracle, my dear. But some day the grave
+and reverend seigneurs on my Board may give me an assistant, I suppose."
+
+"Oh--I know--" Martie was vague again. "What would I get?"
+
+Miss Fanny's harsh cheeks and jaw stiffened, her eyes half closed, as
+she bit her lip in thought.
+
+"Fifteen, perhaps," she submitted.
+
+Martie dallied with the pleasing thought of having fifteen dollars of
+her own each month.
+
+"But can't Miss Fanny make you feel as if you were back in school?" she
+asked, when the girls were again in Main Street. "I'd just as lieves be
+in the lib'ary as anywheres," she added.
+
+"I'd rather be in the box factory," Grace said. "More money."
+
+"More work, too!" Martie suggested. "Come on, let's go to Bonestell's!"
+
+Other persons of all ages were in the drug store, seated on stools at
+the high marble counter, or at the little square cherry tables in the
+dim room at the rear. Drugs were a lesser consideration than brushes,
+stationery, cameras, candy, cigars, post cards, gum, mirrors, celluloid
+bureau sets, flower seeds, and rubber toys and rattles, but large glass
+flagons of coloured waters duly held the corners of the show windows on
+the street, and dusty and fly-specked cards advertising patent
+medicines overlapped each other.
+
+The three girls nodded to various acquaintances, and, as they slid on
+to seats at the counter, greeted the soda clerk familiarly. This was
+Reddy Johnson, a lean, red-headed youth in a rather dirty white jacket
+buttoned up to the chin. Reddy was assisted by a blear-eyed little
+Swedish girl of about sixteen, who rushed about blindly with her little
+blonde head hanging. He himself did not leave the counter, which he
+constantly mopped with a damp, mud-coloured rag. He plunged the
+streaked and sticky glasses into hot water, set them on a dripping
+grating to dry, turned on this faucet of sizzling soda, that of rich
+slow syrup, beat up the contents of glasses with his long-handled
+spoon, slipped them into tarnished nickelled frames, and slid them
+deftly before the waiting boys and girls. Hot sauce over this ice
+cream, nuts on that, lady fingers and whipped cream with the tall
+slender cups of chocolate for the Baxter girls, crackers with the
+tomato bouillon old Lady Snow was noisily sipping; Reddy never made a
+mistake.
+
+Presently he, with a swift motion, set a little plate of sweet crackers
+before the girls. These were not ordinarily served with five-cent
+orders, and the three instantly divided them, concealing the little
+cakes in their hands, and handing the tell-tale plate back to the
+clerk. A wise precaution it proved, for a moment later "old Bones," as
+the proprietor of the establishment was nicknamed, sauntered through
+the store. In a gale of giggles the girls went out, stealthily eating
+the crackers as they went. This adventure was enough to put them in
+high spirits; Martie indeed was so easily fired to excitement that the
+crossing of wits with Dr. Ben, the personal word with Miss Fanny, and
+now Reddy's gallantry, had brightened her colour and carried her
+elation to the point of effervescence. Sparkling, chattering, flushed
+under her shabby summer hat, Martie sauntered between her friends
+straight to her golden hour.
+
+Face to face they came with a tall, loosely built, well-dressed young
+man, with a straw hat on one side of his head. Such a phenomenon was
+almost unknown in the streets of Monroe, and keenly conscious of his
+presence, and instantly curious as to his identity, the girls could not
+pass him without a provocative glance. "Stunning!" said each girl in
+her heart. "Who on earth--?"
+
+Suddenly he blocked their way.
+
+"Hello, Sally! Hello, Martie! Too proud to speak to old friends?"
+
+"Why--it's Rodney Parker!" Martie said in her rich young voice. "Hello,
+Rodney!"
+
+All four shook hands and laughed joyously. To Rodney the circumstance,
+at the opening of his dull return home, was welcome; to the girls,
+nothing short of delight. He was so handsome, so friendly, and in the
+four years he had been at Stanford University and the summers he had
+spent in hunting expeditions or in eastern visits to his aunt in New
+York, he had changed only to improve!
+
+Even in this first informal greeting it was Martie to whom he devoted
+his special attention. Sally was usually considered the prettier of the
+two, but Martie was lovely to-night. Rodney turned with them, and they
+walked to the bridge together. Sally and Grace ahead.
+
+The wind had fallen with the day, the air was mild and warm, and in the
+twilight even Monroe had its charm. Flowers were blooming in many
+dooryards, yellow light streamed hospitably across the gravelled paths,
+and in the early darkness women were waiting in porches or by gates,
+and whirling hoses over the lawns were drawing all the dark, hidden
+perfumes into the damp night air.
+
+"You've not changed much, Martie--except putting up your hair. I mean
+it as a compliment!" said Rodney, eagerly, in his ready, boyish voice.
+
+"You've changed a good deal; and I mean that as a compliment, too!"
+Martie returned, with her deep laugh.
+
+His own broke out in answer. He thought her delightful. The creamy
+skin, the burnished hair that was fanned into an aureole under her
+shabby hat, the generous figure with its young curves, had helped to
+bring about in Rodney Parker a sweet, irrational surrender of reason.
+He had never been a reasonable boy. He knew, of course, that Martie
+Monroe was not in his sisters' set, although she was a perfectly NICE
+girl, and to be respected. Martie was neither one thing nor the other.
+With Grace, indeed, who was frankly beneath the Parkers' notice, he
+might have had almost any sort of affair; even one of those affairs of
+which May and Ida must properly seem unaware. He might have flirted
+with Grace, have taken her about and given her presents, in absolute
+safety. Grace would have guessed him to be only amusing himself, and
+even confident Rodney, his mother's favourite and baby, would never
+have attempted to bring Grace Hawkes home as his sisters' equal.
+
+But with Martie there was a great difference. The Monroes had been
+going down slowly but steadily in the social scale, yet they were
+Monroes, after all. Lydia Monroe had been almost engaged to Clifford
+Frost, years ago, and still, at all public affairs, the Monroes, the
+Parkers, and the Frosts met as old friends and equals. Indeed, the
+Parker girls and Florence Frost had been known to ask the girls' only
+brother, Leonard Monroe, to their parties, young as he was, men being
+very scarce in Monroe, and Leonard, although his sisters were not
+asked, had gone.
+
+So that when Rodney Parker stopped Martie Monroe on the way home, and
+fell to flattering and teasing her, and walked beside her to the
+bridge, he quite innocently plunged himself into social hot water, and
+laid a disturbing touch upon the smooth surface of the girl's life.
+
+They talked of trivialities, laughing much. Rodney asked her if she
+remembered the dreadful day when they had been sent up to apologize to
+the French teacher, and Martie said, "Mais oui!" and thrilled at the
+little intimate memory of disgrace shared.
+
+"And are you still such a little devil, Martie?" he asked, bringing his
+head close to hers.
+
+"That I'll leave you to find out, Rod!" she said laughingly.
+
+"Well--that's one of the things I'm back here to find out!" he answered
+gaily.
+
+Yes, he was back to stay; he was to go into the Bank. He confidently
+expected to die of the shock and Martie must help him bear it. Martie
+promised to open an account. His Dad might let him have a car, if he
+behaved himself; did Martie like automobiles? Martie knew very little
+about them, but was sure she could honk the horn. Very well; Martie
+should come along and honk the horn.
+
+How did they come to be talking of dancing? Martie could not afterward
+remember. Rodney had a visit promised from a college friend, and
+wondered rather disconsolately what might be arranged to amuse him.
+Fortnightly dances--that was the thing; they ought to have Friday
+Fortnightlies.
+
+The very word fired the girl. She heard the whine of violins, the click
+of fans, the light shuffle of satin-clad feet. Her eyes saw dazzling
+lights, shifting colours, in the dull September twilight.
+
+"You could have one at your house," Rodney suggested.
+
+"Of course we could! Our rooms are immense," Martie agreed eagerly.
+
+"To begin--say the last Friday in October!" the boy said. "You look up
+the date, and we'll get together on the lists!"
+
+Get together on the lists! Martie's heart closed over the phrase with a
+sort of spasm of pleasure. She and Rodney conferring--arranging! The
+bliss--the dignity of it! She would have considered anything, promised
+anything.
+
+Grace was gone now, and generous little Sally still ahead of them in
+the shadows. Martie said a quick, laughing good-night, and ran to join
+her sister just before Sally opened the side gate. It was now quite
+dark.
+
+The two girls crossed the sunken garden where clumps of flowers bloomed
+dimly under the dark old trees, gave one apprehensive glance at the big
+house, which showed here and there a dully lighted window, and fled
+noiselessly in at the side door. They ran through a wide, bare, unaired
+hallway, and up a long flight of unlighted stairs that were protected
+over their dark carpeting by a worn brown oilcloth.
+
+Sally, and Martie breathless, entered an enormous bedroom, shabbily and
+scantily furnished. The outline of a large walnut bedstead was visible
+in the gloom, and the dark curtains that screened two bay windows.
+Across the room by a wide, dark bureau, a single gas jet on a jointed
+brass arm had been drawn out close to the mirror, and by its light a
+slender woman of twenty-seven or eight was straightening her hair. Not
+combing or brushing it, for the Monroe girls always combed their hair
+and coiled it when they got up in the morning, and took it down when
+they went to bed at night. Between times they only "straightened" it.
+
+As the younger girls came in, and flung their hats on the bed, their
+sister turned on them reproachfully.
+
+"Martie, mama's furious!" she said. "And I do think it's perfectly
+terrible, you and Sally running round town at all hours like this. It's
+after six o'clock!"
+
+"I can't help it if it is!" Martie said cheerfully. "Pa home?"
+
+She asked the all-important question with more trepidation than she
+showed. Both she and Sally hung anxiously on the reply.
+
+"No; Pa was to come on the four-eleven, and either he missed it, or
+else something's kept him down town," Lydia said in her flat, gentle
+voice. "Len's not home either ..."
+
+"Praise God from whom all blessings flow!" Martie ejaculated piously,
+with her gay, wild laugh. "Tell Lyd who we met, Sally!" she called
+back, as she ran downstairs.
+
+She dashed through the dining room, noting with gratitude that dear old
+Lyd had set the table in spite of her disapproval. Beyond the big,
+gloomy room was an enormous pantry, with a heavy swinging door opening
+into a large kitchen. In this kitchen, in the dim light from one gas
+jet, and in the steam from sink and stove, Mrs. Monroe and her one
+small servant were in the last hot and hurried stages of dinner-getting.
+
+Martie kissed her mother's flushed and sunken cheek; a process to which
+Mrs. Monroe submitted with reproachful eyes and compressed lips.
+
+"I don't like this, Martie!" said her mother, shaking her head. "What
+were you and Sally doing to be so late?"
+
+"Oh, nothing," Martie said ashamedly. "I'm awf'ly sorry. I had no idea
+what time it was!"
+
+"Well, I certainly will have Pa speak to you, if you can't get into the
+house before dark!" Mrs. Monroe said in mild protest. "Lyd stopped her
+sewing to set the table."
+
+"Len home?" Martie, now slicing bread, asked resentfully.
+
+"No. But a boy is different," Mrs. Monroe answered as she had answered
+hundreds of times before. "Not that I approve of Len's actions,
+either," she added. "But a man can take care of himself, of course!
+Len's always late for meals," she went on. "Seems like he can't get it
+through his head that it makes a difference if you sit down when things
+are ready or when they're all dried up. But Pa's late anyway to-night,
+so it doesn't matter much!"
+
+Martie carried the bread on its ugly, heavy china plate in to the
+table, entering from the pantry just as her father came in from the
+hall.
+
+"Hello, Pa!" said the girl, placing the bread on the wrinkled cloth
+with housewifely precision.
+
+Malcolm Monroe gave his youngest daughter glance of lowering suspicion.
+But there was no cause for definite question, and Martie, straightening
+the salt-cellars lovingly, knew it.
+
+"Where's your sister?" her father asked discontentedly.
+
+"Upstairs, straightening her hair for dinner, I THINK." Martie was
+sweetly responsive. "But I can find out, Pa."
+
+"No matter. Here, take these things." Martie carried away the overcoat
+and hat, and hung them on the hat rack in the hall.
+
+"Joe Hawkes wants to know if you wish to pay him for driving you up,
+Pa," Sally said, coming in from the steps. Dutifully, meekly, she stood
+looking at her father. Lydia, coming in from the kitchen, gave him a
+respectful yet daughterly kiss. Singly and collectively there was no
+fault to be found with the Monroe girls to-night, even by the most
+exacting parent.
+
+"Your sister said you were upstairs, Sally," Malcolm said, narrowing
+his eyes.
+
+"So I was, Pa, but I came down to light the hall gas, and while I was
+there Joe came to the door," Sally answered innocently.
+
+"H'm! Well, you tell him to charge it." Malcolm sat down by the
+fireplace. There was no fire, the evening was not cold enough for one.
+He began to unlace his shoes. "Brother home?" he asked, glancing from
+Lydia, who was filling the water glasses from a glazed china pitcher,
+to Martie, who was dragging and pushing six chairs into place.
+
+"Not yet--no, sir!" the two girls said together unhesitatingly. Leonard
+could take care of himself under his father's displeasure. Martie added
+solicitously, "Would you like your slippers, Pa? I know where they are;
+by the chestard."
+
+He did not immediately answer, being indeed in no mood for a civil
+response, and yet finding no welcome cause for grievance. He sat, a
+lean, red-faced man, with a drooping black moustache, a high-bridged
+nose, and grizzled hair, looking moodily about him.
+
+"Get them--get them; don't stand staring there, Martie!" he burst out
+suddenly. Martie caught up his shoes and dashed upstairs.
+
+She went into the large, vault-like apartment that had been her
+mother's bedroom for nearly thirty years. To a young and ardent nature,
+facing the great question of loving and mating, any place less
+indicative of the warmth and companionship of marriage could hardly
+have been imagined. The bedstead of heavy redwood was wide, flat, and
+hard. It was flanked by a marble-topped table and a chair. There were
+two large, curtained bay windows in this room, too, a faded carpet, a
+wash-stand with two pallid towels on the rack, several other
+stiff-backed chairs, and a large bureau with a square mirror and a
+brown marble slab. Over this slab a thin strip of fringed scarf was
+laid, and on the scarf stood a brown satin box, with the word "Gloves"
+painted over the yellow roses that ornamented its cover.
+
+This was all. Mrs. Monroe kept in the box an odd castor, an empty
+cologne bottle, a new corset string, five coat buttons, a rusty pair of
+scissors, an old jet bar-brooch whose pin was gone, and various other
+small odds and ends. She had but one pair of gloves, of black shiny
+kid, somewhat whitened at the finger-tips, and worn only to church or
+to funerals. They were a sort of institution, "my gloves," and were
+kept in the bureau drawer. They distinguished her state from that of
+Belle, the maid, who had no gloves at all.
+
+Opposite the bureau, but because of the enormous size of the room, some
+twenty-five feet away, was the "chestard" the high "chest of drawers"
+that had won its name from the children's contracted pronunciation.
+This bleak article of furniture contained the smaller pieces of Malcolm
+Monroe's wardrobe, which matched in plainness and ugliness that of his
+wife. Stiff white collars caught and rasped when the shallow upper
+drawer was opened; the middle drawers were filled with brownish gray
+flannels, and shirts stiff-bosomed and limp of sleeves. But if a
+curious Martie, making the bed, or putting away the "wash," ever
+cautiously tugged out the lowest drawer, she found it so loaded with
+papers, old account books, and bundles of letters as to awe her young
+soul. These meant nothing to Martie, and the drawer was heavy to open
+noiselessly and awkward to close in haste, yet at intervals now and
+then she liked to peep at its mysterious contents.
+
+To-night, however, Martie gave it neither glance nor thought. She
+picked up her father's slippers and ran downstairs again, going to
+kneel before him and put them on his feet. As she did so her young warm
+hand felt the cool, slender length of his foot in the thin stocking,
+and she was conscious of repugnance that even the slightest contact
+with her father always caused her. There was a definite antagonism
+between Malcolm and his youngest daughter, suspected by neither. But
+Martie knew that she did not like the faint odour of his moustache, his
+breath, and his skin, on those rather infrequent occasions when he
+kissed her, and her father was well aware that in baffling him, evading
+him, and anticipating him, Martie was more annoying than the three
+other children combined.
+
+"Where's your son?" asked the man of the house, as the dinner,
+accompanied by his wife, came in from the kitchen.
+
+"I don't know, Pa," Mrs. Monroe said earnestly yet soothingly. "Come,
+girls. Come, Pa!"
+
+Malcolm rose stiffly, and went to his place.
+
+"He comes and goes as if his father's house was a hotel, does he?" he
+asked, as one merely curious. "Is that the idea?"
+
+"Why, no, Pa." Mrs. Monroe was serving an uninteresting meal on heavy
+plates decorated in toneless brown. Soda crackers and sliced bread were
+on the table, and a thin slice of butter on a blue china plate. The
+teaspoons stood erect in a tumbler of red pressed glass. The younger
+girls had old, thin silver napkin rings; their mother's was of
+orange-wood with "Souvenir of Santa Cruz" painted on it; and Lydia and
+her father used little strips of scalloped and embroidered linen. Lydia
+had read of these in a magazine and had made them herself, and as her
+daughterly love swept over all the surface ugliness of his character,
+she alone among his children sometimes caught a glimpse of her father's
+heart. She had an ideal of fatherhood, had gentle, silent, useless
+Lydia--formed upon the genial, sunshiny type of parent popular in
+books, and she cast a romantic veil over disappointed, selfish,
+crossgrained Malcolm Monroe and delighted in little daughterly
+attentions to him. She sat next to him at table, and put her own kindly
+interpretation upon his moods.
+
+"I confess I don't understand your tactics with that boy!" he said now
+irritably.
+
+"Well, he came in after school, and asked could he go out with the
+other boys, and I didn't feel you would disapprove, Pa," Mrs. Monroe
+said in a worried voice. "Do eat your dinner before it gets all cold!
+Lenny'll be here. You'll get one of your bad headaches ... here he is!"
+
+For, to the great relief of his mother and sisters, Leonard Monroe
+really did break in from the hall at this point, flinging his cap
+toward the hat rack with one hand as he opened the door with the other.
+A big, well-developed boy of seventeen was Lenny, dearest of all her
+children to his mother, her son and her latest-born, and the secret
+hope of his father's heart.
+
+"Say--I'm awful sorry to be so late. Gosh! I ran all the way home. I
+thought you'd be on the late train, Pa, and I waited to walk up with
+you!" said Lenny, falling upon cooling mutton, boiled potatoes glazed
+and sticky, and canned corn.
+
+"Where did you wait?" his father asked, laying one of his endless traps
+for an untruth.
+
+"Bonestell's," Lenny answered, perceiving and evading it.
+
+"Young Hawkes drove me up," Malcolm said in a mollified tone.
+
+"Oh?" Lenny's mouth opened innocently. "That's the way I missed you!"
+
+The inevitable ill-temper on their father's part being partly
+dissipated by this time, the girls were free to begin a conversation.
+Martie's happiness was flooding her spirit like a golden tide; she was
+conscious, under all the sordid actualities of a home dinner, that
+something sweet--sweet--sweet--had happened to her. She bubbled news.
+
+Grace Hawkes actually was going to work Monday--Rose was going back to
+visit Alma--they had met Doc' Ben, hadn't they, Sally? Oh, and Rodney
+Parker was home!
+
+"Lucky stiff!" Lenny commented in reference to Rodney.
+
+"He's awfully nice!" Martie said eagerly. "He walked up with us!"
+
+"With us--with YOU!" Sally corrected archly.
+
+"What time was that?" their father asked suddenly.
+
+"About--oh, half-past four or five. Sally and I went down for the mail."
+
+"Rodney Parker ..." Leonard began. "Say, mama, this is all cold," he
+interrupted himself to say coaxingly.
+
+"I'll warm it for you, Babe," Lydia said, rising as her mother began to
+rise, and reaching for the boy's plate.
+
+"Don't call me BABE!" he protested.
+
+His older sister gave his rough head a good-natured pat as she passed
+him.
+
+"You're all the baby we have, Lenny--and he was an awfully sweet baby,
+wasn't he, ma?" she said.
+
+"Rodney Parker's going to be in the Bank; I bet he doesn't stay,"
+Leonard resumed. "Could you get me into the Bank, Pa?"
+
+"Dear me--I remember that boy as such a handsome baby, before you were
+born, Martie," her mother said. "And to think he's been through
+college!"
+
+"I wish I could go to college, you bet!" observed Lenny. His father
+shot him a glance.
+
+"Your grandfather was a college graduate, my son, and as you know only
+an accident cut short my own stay at my alma mater--hem!" he said
+pompously. "I have no money to throw away; yet, when you have decided
+upon a profession, you need only come to your father with a frank,
+manly statement of your plans, and what can be done will be done; you
+know that." He wiped his moustache carefully, and glanced about,
+meeting the admiring gaze of wife and daughters.
+
+"If you've got any sense, you'll go, Len," Martie said. "I wish you'd
+let me go study to be a trained nurse, Pa! Miss Fanny wants me to go
+into the lib'ary. I bet I could do it, and I'd like it, too ..."
+
+"And speaking of your grandfather reminds me," Malcolm said heavily,
+"that one of the things that delayed me to-day was a matter that came
+up a week or two ago. When the town buys the old Archer ranch as a
+Park, they propose to put twelve thousand dollars into improvements--"
+
+"Oh, joy!" said Martie. "Excuse me, Pa!"
+
+"The trolley will pass it," her father pursued, "the Park being almost
+exactly half-way between Monroe and Pittsville. Now Pittsville ..."
+
+"What do you bet they get all the glory?" Martie flashed. "Their
+Woman's Club..." Her voice fell: "I DO beg your pardon, Pa!" she said
+again contritely.
+
+"I can discuss this with your mother," Malcolm said in majestic
+patience.
+
+"Oh, no! PLEASE, Pa!"
+
+Her father studied her coldly, while the table waited with bated breath.
+
+"Pittsville," he resumed in a measured voice, without moving his eyes
+from his third daughter, "is, as usual, making a very strong and a most
+undignified claim for the Park. They wish it to be known as the
+Pittsville Casino. But Selwyn told me to-day that our people propose to
+take a leading share of the liability and to call the Park the Monroe
+Grove."
+
+He paused. His listeners exchanged glances of surprise and
+gratification.
+
+"Not that there's a tree there now!" Martie said cheerfully.
+
+It was an unfortunate speech, breaking irreverently as it did upon this
+moment of exaltation. Lydia hastily came to Martie's relief.
+
+"Pa! ISN'T that splendid--for Grandfather Monroe! I think that's very
+nice. They know what this town would have amounted to without HIM! All
+those fine reference books in the library--and files and files of bound
+magazine's! And didn't he give the property for the church?"
+
+Every one present was aware that he had; there was enthusiastic assent
+about the table.
+
+"They propose," Malcolm added as a climax, "to erect a statue of
+Leonard Monroe in a prominent place in that Park; my gift."
+
+"Pa!" said a delighted chorus. The girls' shining eyes were moist.
+
+"It was Selwyn's idea that there should be a fund for the cost of the
+statue," their father said. "But as the town will feel the added
+taxation in any case, I propose to make that my gift. The cost is not
+large, the time limit for paying it indefinite."
+
+"Twenty thousand dollars?" Martie, who had a passion for guessing,
+ventured eagerly.
+
+"Not so much." But Malcolm was pleased to have the reality so much more
+moderate than the guess. "Between two and three thousand."
+
+"Some money!" Leonard exclaimed. He grinned at Martie contemptuously.
+"TWENTY!" said he.
+
+"Your sister naturally has not much idea of the value of money,"
+Malcolm said, with what was for him rare tolerance. "Yes, it is a large
+sum, but I can give it, and if my townspeople turn to me for this
+tribute to their most distinguished pioneer ..."
+
+During the rest of the meal no other subject was discussed.
+
+The evening was bright with memories and dreams for Martie. When a
+large dish of stewed apples in tapioca had been eaten, the whole family
+rose and left the room, and Belle, the little maid, came in wearily,
+alone, to attack the disordered table. For two hours the sound of
+running water and the dragging of Belle's heavy feet would be heard in
+the kitchen. Meanwhile, Belle's mother, in a small house down in the
+village, would keep looking at the clock and wondering whatever had
+become of Belle, and Belle's young man would loiter disconsolately at
+the bridge, waiting.
+
+The three Monroe girls and their mother went into the parlour, Malcolm
+going across the hall to a dreary library, where he had an
+old-fashioned cabinet desk, and Lenny gaining a reluctant consent to
+his request to go down to "Dutch's" house, where he and Dutch would
+play lotto.
+
+"Why doesn't Dutch Harrison ever come here to play lotto?" Martie asked
+maliciously. "You go to Dutch's because it's right down near
+Bonestell's and Mallon's and the Pool Parlour!" Leonard shot her a
+threatening glance, accepted a half-permission, snatched his cap and
+was gone.
+
+The parlour was large, cold, and uncomfortable, its woodwork brown, its
+walls papered in dark green. Lydia lighted the fire, and as Leonard had
+made his escape, Belle brought up a supplementary hodful of coal.
+Martie lighted two of the four gas jets, and settled down to solitaire.
+Sally read "Idylls of the King." Lydia and her mother began to sew, the
+older woman busy with mending a hopelessly worn table-cloth, the
+younger one embroidering heavy linen with hundreds of knots. Lydia had
+been making a parasol top for more than a year. They gossiped in low,
+absorbed tones of the affairs of friends and neighbours; the endless
+trivial circumstances so interesting to the women of a small town.
+
+There were two gas jets, also on hinged arms, beside the white marble
+fireplace, and one of these Sally lighted, taking her father's
+comfortable chair. A hood of thin plum-coloured flannel, embroidered in
+coloured flowers, was on the mantel, with shells, two pink glass vases,
+and a black marble clock. On the old square piano, where yellowing
+sheets of music were heaped, there was a cover of the same flannel.
+Albums and gift books, Schiller's "Bell" with Flaxman plates, and
+Dante's "Inferno" with Dore's illustrations--lay on the centre table;
+Martie pushed them back for her game.
+
+She looked a mere overgrown, untidy girl, to whose hair, belt,
+finger-nails, and shoes she might have attended with advantage. But
+Martie was a bride to-night, walking the realm of Romance.
+
+She had never had an admirer, nor had Sally. Neither girl admitted it,
+but it was true. Poor Lydia had had a taste of the joy of life, and a
+full measure of the sorrow, seven years ago, when Clifford Frost,
+twelve years her senior, at thirty-one the perfect match, had singled
+her out for his favour. Martie and Sally could remember how pleasantly
+exciting it was to have Cliff Frost so much at the house, how Lydia
+laughed and bloomed! Lydia had been just Sally then: her age, and her
+double.
+
+What had gone wrong, the younger girls sometimes wondered. Pa had been
+pompous, of course; Cliff had not been made exactly comfortable, here
+by this marble mantel. Lydia had quavered out her happy welcome, her
+mother had fluttered and smiled. And Cliff had given her candy, and
+taken her to the Methodist Bazaar and the Elks' Minstrels, and had
+given her a fan. The candy was eaten long ago, and the dance music and
+the concerts long forgotten in the village, but Lydia still had the fan.
+
+For a year, for two, for three, the affair went on. There was a cloud
+in the sky before Mary Canfield came to visit Mrs. Frost, but with her
+coming, joy died in Lydia's heart. Mary was made for loving; Mary's
+mother and father and aunts and cousins all made it easy for any man to
+fall in love with her. Mary danced, played the piano, chattered French,
+changed from one pretty frock to another, tirelessly. In short, Mary
+was a marketable product, and Lydia was not.
+
+Cliff came to tell Lydia that he and Mary were to be married, and that
+she had always been his best pal, and that their friendship had been
+one of the sweetest things in his life. He kissed her in brotherly
+fashion when he went away. Mary, lovely in bridal silks, came to call
+on Lydia a few months later, and to this day when she met faded, sweet
+Miss Monroe, the happy little wife and mother would stop in street or
+shop and display little Ruth's charms, and chat graciously for a few
+minutes. She always defended Lydia when the Frost and Parker factions
+lamented that the Monroe girls were inclined to be "common."
+
+Martie thought of none of these things to-night. She thought of Rodney
+Parker, and her heart floated upon clouds of rose-coloured delight.
+Dreamily manipulating the cards, she remembered that twilight meeting.
+"Are you still a little devil, Martie ... I'm going to find out." Again
+they were walking slowly toward the bridge. "How many people have told
+you you've grown awfully pretty, Martie? ... You and I'll get together
+on the lists. ..."
+
+The girl stopped, with arrested fingers and absent eyes. The rapture of
+remembering thrilled her young body like a breath of flame blown
+against her. She breathed with deep, slow respirations, holding her
+breath with a risen breast, and letting it go with a long sigh. Now and
+then she looked with an ashamed and furtive glance from her mother's
+gray head and Lydia's busy fingers to Sally's absorbed face under the
+opaque white globe of the gaslight, almost as if she feared that the
+enchantment that held heart and brain would be visible to watching eyes.
+
+"Mind you," Lydia was saying in a low tone, "Flora said that Lou acted
+very queer, from the very moment she went in--Lou asked her if she
+wanted to look at poor Mr. Lowney, and Flora went in, and he was all
+laid out, with flowers and all, in that upstairs room where Al died.
+Grandma Lowney was there, and--oh, quite a few others, coming and
+going, Mrs. Mallon and the Baxter girls. Flora only stayed a minute,
+and when she and Lou went out, she says, 'Lou, has Annie Poett been
+here since he was taken sick?' and Lou began to cry and said that her
+mother answered the telephone when Annie called up last week, and it
+seems Annie asked was Joe Lowney sick and Mrs. King said 'No.'"
+
+"For heaven's sake!" Mrs. Monroe said, incredulous and absorbed.
+
+"Well, that's what Flora said. But mind you, Ma, on Tuesday night
+little Hildegarde King went to the door, and she says that Annie Poett
+came in and went upstairs--Lou was dishing supper, you know the Allens
+and Mrs. Gorman were there for the funeral, and they were all at
+table--and, by the way, Flora says that Lou says that Lizzie Alien was
+there in that house for three days--that is, it was nearly three days,
+for they stayed for supper Wednesday night--and that Lizzie never
+raised her hand to ONE THING, just did nothing but sit around and cry,
+and say what a good brother Joe was!"
+
+"Did you ever!" commented Mrs. Monroe.
+
+"Anyway, nobody got up from the table, and all they had for it was
+Hildegarde's word, and she wasn't sure it was Annie. Grandma Lowney was
+asleep--they'd gotten her to lie down; she took more care of Joe than
+any one else, you know, and she sat up both nights. Clara Baxter says
+she looks awful; she doesn't believe she'll get over it."
+
+"I shouldn't wonder!" said Mrs. Monroe with a click of commiseration.
+
+"Lou told Flora that the night Joe was dying, Grandma broke out and
+said to Paul King that if Joe hadn't gone with him out to Deegan Point
+two weeks ago, he never would have had that chill. But Flora says ..."
+
+The low voices went on and on, even after Malcolm Monroe came in,
+thoroughly tired and a little chilly, to take his own chair by the
+fire. Sally, deposed, came to sit opposite Martie, and idly watched the
+solitaire.
+
+"Isn't Rodney Parker nice?" Sally whispered cautiously, after a while.
+
+"I think he is!" Martie answered hardily; but the happy colour came to
+her cheeks.
+
+"I'll bet all the girls go crazy about him!" Sally submitted.
+
+A faint pang of jealousy, a vague sense of helplessness, seized upon
+Martie. He had been so cordially gay and delightful with her; would he
+be that with all the girls? Would Florence Frost, three years older
+than he, fall a victim to his charm as quickly as she, Martie, had
+fallen? Martie had mentioned Florence Frost this afternoon, and by
+subtle, instinctive, girlish reasoning had found consolation in his
+reply. "She's my sister's friend; she's awfully smart, you know--books
+and all that!" Rodney honestly felt an entire indifference to this
+admirable young neighbour, and Martie understood his remark as meaning
+exactly that.
+
+She went on with her patience, the particular game known as the "Idle
+Year." Sometimes Sally touched or mentioned a card. Sometimes, as a
+final problem presented itself, the girls consulted as to the wisdom of
+this play or that. Between games Martie shuffled vigorously, and they
+talked more freely.
+
+"I think he's crazy about you," said Sally.
+
+"Oh, Sally, don't be such a fool!"
+
+"I'm not fooling. Look at the way he turned back and walked with us,
+and he never took his eyes off you!" Sally, somewhat dashed for an
+instant by Martie's well-assumed scorn, gained confidence now, as the
+new radiance brightened her sister's face. "Why, Mart," she said
+boldly, "there is such a thing as love at first sight!"
+
+Love at first sight! Martie felt a sort of ecstatic suffocation at the
+words. An uncontrollable smile twitched at her mouth, she recommenced
+her game briskly. Her heart was dancing.
+
+"Lissun; do you suppose Ma would ever let us have a party here?" Martie
+presently ventured.
+
+Sally pursed her lips and shook a doubtful head.
+
+"Oh, but, Sally, I don't mean a real party, of course. Just about
+twenty--" Martie began.
+
+"Lemonade and cake?" Sally supplied.
+
+"Well--coffee and sandwiches, Rodney seemed to think. And punch."
+
+"Punch! Martie! You know Pa never would."
+
+"I don't see why not," Martie said discontentedly, slapping down her
+cards noisily. Sally spoke only the truth, yet it was an irritating
+truth, and Martie would have preferred a soothing lie.
+
+"What about music for dancing?" Sally asked, after a thoughtful
+interval.
+
+"Angela Baxter," Martie said with reviving hope.
+
+"But she charges two dollars; at least she did for the Baptist euchre."
+
+"Well--that's not so much!"
+
+"We could make those cute brown-bread sandwiches Rose had," Sally
+mused, warming to the possibility. "And use the Canton set. Nobody in
+town has china like ours, anyway!"
+
+"Oh, Sally," Martie was again fired, "we could have creamed chicken and
+sandwiches--that's all anybody ever wants! And it's so much sweller
+than messy sherbets and layer cake. And we could decorate the rooms
+with greens--"
+
+"Our rooms are lovely, anyway!" Sally stated with satisfaction.
+
+"Why, with the folding doors open, and fires in both grates, they would
+be perfectly stunning!" Martie spoke rapidly, her colour rising, her
+blue eyes glittering like stars. "Of course, the back room isn't
+furnished, but we could scatter some chairs around in there; we'll need
+all the room for dancing, anyway!"
+
+"We couldn't dance on this carpet," Sally submitted, perplexed, as she
+glanced at the parlour's worn floor-covering.
+
+"No, but we could in the back room--that floor's bare--and in the
+hall," Martie answered readily. "You see it's the first of a sort of
+set of dances; the next would be at the Frosts' or the Barkers', and it
+would mean that we were right in things--"
+
+"Oh, it would be lovely if we could do it!" Sally agreed with a sigh.
+"Play the Queen on here, Martie, and then you'll have a space."
+
+"Do you propose to play that game much longer, girls?" their father
+asked, looking patiently over his book.
+
+"Are we disturbing you, Pa?" Martie countered politely.
+
+"Well--but don't stop on my account. Of course the sound of cards and
+voices isn't exactly soothing. However, go on with your game--go on
+with your game! If I can't stand it, I'll go back to the library."
+
+"Oh, no, Pa, it's too cold in there; this is the time of year you
+always get that cold in your nose," Mrs. Monroe said pleadingly.
+
+"I was going right up, anyway," Sally said with an apologetic air and a
+glance toward the door.
+
+"I'll go, too!" Martie jumbled the cards together, and rose. "It's
+nearly ten, anyway."
+
+A moment later she and Sally went out of the room together. But while
+Sally went straight upstairs, to light the bedroom gas, fold up the
+counterpane, and otherwise play the part of the good sister she was,
+Martie noiselessly opened the side door and stepped out for a breath of
+the sweet autumn night.
+
+There was a spectacularly bright moon, somewhere; Martie could not see
+it, but beyond the sunken garden she caught glimpses of silvery
+brightness on the roofs of Monroe. Even here, under the dark trees,
+pools of light had formed and the heavy foliage was shot with shafts of
+radiance. A strong wind was clicking the eucalyptus leaves together,
+and carrying bits of rubbish here and there about the yard. Martie
+could hear voices, the barking of dogs, and the whine of the ten
+o'clock trolley, down in the village.
+
+The gate slammed. Leonard came in.
+
+"Pa tell you to watch for me?" he asked fearfully.
+
+"No." Martie, sitting on the top step and hugging her knees, answered
+indifferently. "It's not ten yet. What you been doing?"
+
+"Oh, nothing!" Len passed her and went in.
+
+As a matter of fact, he had called for his chum, sauntered into the
+candy store for caramels, joined the appreciative group that watched a
+drunken man forcibly ejected from Casserley's saloon, visited the pool
+room and witnessed a game or two, gone back into the street to tease
+two hurrying and giggling girls with his young wit, and drifted into a
+passing juggler's wretched and vulgar show. This, or something like
+this, was what Len craved when he begged to "go out for a while" after
+dinner. It was sometimes a little more entertaining, sometimes less so;
+but it spelled life for the seventeen-year-old boy.
+
+He could not have described this to Martie, even had he cared to do so.
+She would not have understood it. But she felt a vague yearning, too,
+for lights and companionship and freedom, a vague envy of Leonard.
+
+The world was out there, beyond the gate, beyond the village. She was
+in it, but not of it. She longed to begin to live, and knew not how.
+Ten years before she had been only a busy, independent, happy little
+girl; turning to her mother and sister for advice, obeying her father
+without question. But Pa and Lydia, and Len with his egotism, and Ma
+with her trials, were nothing to Martie now. In battle, in pestilence,
+or after a great fire, she would have risen head and shoulders above
+them all, would have worked gloriously to reestablish them. She
+supposed that she loved them dearly. But so terrible was the hunger of
+her heart for her share of life--for loving, serving, planning, and
+triumphing--that she would have swept them all aside like cobwebs to
+grasp the first reality flung her by fate.
+
+Not to stagnate, not to smother, not to fade and shrink like
+Lydia--like Miss Fanny at the library, and the Baxter girls at the
+post-office! Every healthy young fibre of Martie's soul and body
+rebelled against such a fate, but she could not fully sense the
+barriers about her, nor plan any move that should loosen her bonds.
+Martie believed, as her parents believed, that life was largely a
+question of "luck." Money, fame, friends, power, to this man; poverty
+and obscurity and helplessness to that one. Wifehood, motherhood,
+honour and delight to one school girl; gnawing, restless uselessness to
+the next. "I only hope you girls are going to marry," their mother
+would sometimes say plaintively; "but I declare I don't know who--with
+all the nice boys leaving town the way they do! Pa gives you a good
+home, but he can't do much more, and after he and I go, why, it will be
+quite natural for you girls to go on keeping house for Len--I suppose."
+
+Martie's sensitive soul writhed under these mournful predictions.
+Dependence was bitter to her, Len's kindly patronage stung her only a
+little less than his occasional moods of cheerful masculine contempt.
+He meant to take care of his sisters, he wasn't ever going to marry. Pa
+needn't worry, Len said. The house was mortgaged, Martie knew; their
+father's business growing less year by year; there would be no great
+inheritance, and if life was not satisfying now, when she had youth and
+plenty, what would it be when Pa was gone?
+
+It was all dark, confusing, baffling, to ignorant, untrained nineteen.
+The sense of time passing, of opportunities unseen and ungrasped, might
+well make Martie irritable, restless, and reckless. Happiness and
+achievement were to be bought, but she knew not with what coinage.
+
+To-day the darkness had been shot by a gleam of living light. Through
+Rodney Parker's casual gallantries Martie's eyes looked into a new
+world. It was a world of loving, of radiant self-confidence and
+self-expression. Martie saw herself buying gowns for the wedding,
+whisking in and out of Monroe's shops, stopped by affectionate and
+congratulatory friends. She was dining at Mrs. Barker's, dignified, and
+yet gracious and responsive, too. Dear old Judge Parker was being
+courteous to her; Mrs. Parker advising Rodney's young wife. There were
+grandchildren running over the old place. Martie remembered the big
+rooms from long-ago red-letter days of her childhood. How she would
+love her home, and what a figure of dignity and goodness Mrs. Rodney
+Parker would be in the life of the town.
+
+Oh, dear God--it was not so much to ask! People were getting married
+all the time; Rodney Parker must marry some one. Lydia was unwed, Sally
+had no lover; but out of so rich and full a world could not so much be
+spared to Martie? Oh, how good she would be, how generous to Pa and the
+girls, how kind to Ida and May!
+
+Martie bowed her head on her knees. If this one thing might come her
+way, if it might be her fate to have Rodney Parker love her, to have
+the engagement and the wedding follow in their happy order, she would
+never ask more of God; gaining so much she would truly be good, she
+would live for others then!
+
+When she raised her face it was wet with tears.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+The next morning, when the younger girls came down to breakfast, they
+found only the three women in the kitchen. An odour of coffee hung in
+the air. Belle was scraping burned toast at the sink, the flying, sooty
+particles clinging to wet surfaces everywhere. Lydia sat packing cold
+hominy in empty baking-powder tins; to be sliced and fried for the noon
+meal. Mrs. Monroe, preferring an informal kitchen breakfast to her own
+society in the dining room, was standing by the kitchen table,
+alternating swallows from a saucerless cup of hot coffee with
+indifferent mouthfuls of buttered cold bread. She rarely went to the
+trouble of toasting her own bread, spending twice the energy required
+to do so in protests against the trouble.
+
+Lydia had breakfasted an hour ago. Sally and Martie sliced bread,
+pushed forward the coffee pot, and entered a spirited claim for cream.
+It was Saturday morning, when Leonard slept late. Pa was always late.
+Lydia was anxious to save a generous amount of cream for the sleepers.
+
+"Len often takes a second cup of coffee when he's got lots of time,"
+Lydia said.
+
+"Well, I don't care!" Martie said, suddenly serious. "I'm going to take
+my coffee black, anyway. I'm getting too fat!"
+
+"Oh, Martie, you are not!" Sally laughed.
+
+"That's foolish--you'll just upset your health!" her mother added
+disapprovingly.
+
+Martie's only answer was a buoyant kiss. She and Sally carried their
+breakfast into the dining room, where they established themselves
+comfortably at one end of the long table. While they ate, dipping their
+toast in the coffee, buttering and rebuttering it, they chattered as
+tirelessly as if they had been deprived of each other's society and
+confidence for weeks.
+
+The morning was dark and foggy, and a coal fire slumbered in the grate,
+giving out a bitter, acrid smell. Against the windows the soft mist
+pressed, showing a yellow patch toward the southeast, where the sun
+would pierce it after a while.
+
+Malcolm Monroe came downstairs at about nine o'clock, and the girls
+gathered up their dishes and disappeared in the direction of the
+kitchen. Not that Ma would not, as usual, prepare their father's toast
+and bacon with her own hands, and not that Lydia would not, as usual,
+serve it. The girls were not needed. But Pa always made it impossible
+for them to be idle and comfortable over their own meal. If he did not
+actually ask them to fetch butter or water, or if he could find no
+reasonable excuse for fault-finding, he would surely introduce some
+dangerous topic; lure them into admissions, stand ready to pursue any
+clue. He did not like to see young girls care-free and contented; time
+enough for that later on! And as years robbed him of actual dignities,
+and as Monroe's estimate of him fell lower and lower, he turned upon
+his daughters the authority, the carping and controlling that might
+otherwise have been spent upon respectful employees and underlings. He
+found some relief for a chafed and baffled spirit in the knowledge that
+Sally and Martie were helpless, were bound to obey, and could easily be
+made angry and unhappy.
+
+Lydia, her father's favourite, came in with a loaded tray, just as Len,
+slipping down the back stairs, was being stealthily regaled by his
+mother on a late meal in the kitchen. Len had no particular desire for
+his father's undiluted company.
+
+"Good morning, Pa!" Lydia said, with a kiss for his cool forehead.
+"Your paper's right there by the fire; there's quite a fog, and it got
+wet."
+
+Hands locked, she settled herself opposite him, and revolved in her
+mind the terms in which she might lay before him the younger girls'
+hopes. It was part of Lydia's concientiousness not to fail them now,
+even though she secretly disapproved of the whole thing.
+
+"Pa," she began bravely, "you wouldn't mind the girls having some of
+their friends in some evening, would you? I thought perhaps some night
+when you were down in the city--"
+
+"Your idea, my dear?" Malcolm said graciously.
+
+"Well--Martie's really." Lydia was always scrupulously truthful.
+
+His face darkened a little. He pursed his lips.
+
+"Dinner, eh?"
+
+"Oh, no, Pa! Just dancing, or--" Lydia was watching him closely, "or
+games," she substituted hurriedly. "You see the other girls have these
+little parties, and our girls--" her voice fell.
+
+"Such an affair costs money, my dear!"
+
+"Not much, Pa!"
+
+His eyes were discontentedly fixed upon the headlines of his paper, but
+he was thinking.
+
+"Making a lot of work for your mother," he protested, "upsetting the
+whole house like a pack of wolves! Upon my word, I can't see the
+necessity. Why can't Sally and Martie--"
+
+"But it's only once in a long while, Pa," Lydia urged.
+
+"I know--I know! Well, you ask Martie to speak to me about it in a day
+or two. Now go call your mother."
+
+For the gracious permission Lydia gave him an appreciative kiss,
+leaving him comfortable with his fire, his newspaper, and his armchair,
+as she went on her errand.
+
+"Pa was terribly sweet about the dance," she told Martie and Sally.
+
+Belle was now deep in breakfast dishes, and the two girls had gone out
+into the foggy dooryard with the chickens' breakfast. A flock of mixed
+fowls were clucking and pecking over the bare ground under the willows.
+Martie held the empty tin pan in one hand, in the other was a
+half-eaten cruller. Sally had turned her serge skirt up over her
+shoulders as a protection against the cool air, exposing a shabby
+little "balmoral."
+
+"Oh, Lyd, you're an angel!" Martie said, holding the cruller against
+Lydia's mouth. But Lydia expressed a grateful negative with a shake of
+her head; she never nibbled between meals.
+
+She retailed the conversation with her father. Martie and Sally became
+fired with enthusiasm as they listened. An animated discussion
+followed. Grace was a problem. Dared they ignore Grace? There was a
+lamentable preponderance of girls without her. All their lists began
+and ended with, "Well, there's Rodney and his friends--that's two--"
+
+The day was as other days, except to Martie. When the chickens were
+fed, she and Sally idled for perhaps half an hour in the yard, and then
+went into the kitchen. Belle, sooty and untidy, had paused at the
+kitchen table, with her dustpan resting three feet away from the cold
+mutton that lay there. Mrs. Monroe's hair was in some disorder, and a
+streak of black from the stove lay across one of her lean, greasy
+wrists. The big stove was cooling now, ashes drifted from the firebox
+door, and an enormous saucepan of slowly cooking beans gave forth a
+fresh, unpleasant odour. At all the windows the fog pressed softly.
+
+"Are you going down town, Sally?" the mother asked.
+
+"Well--I thought we would. We can if you want!" said Sally.
+
+"If you do, I wish you'd step into Mason & White's, and ask one of the
+men there if they aren't ever going to send me the rest of my box of
+potatoes."
+
+"All right!" Martie and Sally put their hats on in the downstair hall,
+shouted upstairs to Lydia for the shoes, and sauntered out contentedly
+into the soft, foggy morning. The Monroe girls never heard the garden
+gate slam behind them without a pleasant yet undefined sense of
+freedom. The sun was slowly but steadily gaining on the fog, a bright
+yellow blur showed the exact spot where shining light must soon break
+through. Trees along the way dripped softly, but on the other side of
+the bridge, where houses were set more closely together, and gardens
+less dense, sidewalks and porches were already drying.
+
+The girls walked past the new, trim little houses and the clumsy, big,
+old-fashioned ones, chattering incessantly. Their bright, interested
+eyes did not miss the tiniest detail. The village, sleepier than ever
+on the morning of the half-holiday, was full of interest to them.
+
+Mrs. Hughie Wilson was sweeping her garden path, and called out to them
+that the church concert had netted 327 dollars; wasn't that pretty good?
+
+A few steps farther on they met Alice Clark, who kept them ten minutes
+in eager, unimportant conversation. Her parting remark sent the Monroe
+girls happily on their way.
+
+"I hear Rodney Parker's home--don't pretend to be surprised, Martha
+Monroe. A little bird was telling me that I'll have to go up North Main
+Street for news of him after this!"
+
+"Who do you s'pose told her we met Rod Parker?" Martie grinned as they
+went on.
+
+"People see everything! Oh, Martie," said Sally earnestly, "I do hope
+you are going to marry; no, don't laugh! I don't mean Rod, of course,
+I'm not such a fool. But I mean some one."
+
+"You ought to marry first, Sally; you're the older," Martie said, with
+averted eyes and a sort of delicious shame.
+
+"Oh, I don't mind that, Martie, if only we begin!" Sally answered
+fervently. "When I think of what the next ten years MEAN for us, it
+just makes me sick! Either we'll marry and have our own homes and
+children, or we'll be like Alice, and the Baxters, and Miss Fanny--"
+
+"I'd just as soon have a good job like Miss Fanny," Martie said
+hardily. "She gets sixty a month."
+
+"Well, I wouldn't!" Sally protested in a sudden burst. "Being in an
+office would KILL me, I think! I just couldn't do it! But I believe I
+COULD manage a little house, and children, and I'd like that! I
+wouldn't mind being poor--I never really think of being anything
+else--but what I'm so afraid of is that Len'll marry and we'll just
+be--just be AUNTS!"
+
+Such vehemence was not usual to Sally, and as her earnestness brought
+her to a full stop on the sidewalk, the two sisters found themselves
+facing each other. They burst into a joyous laugh, as their eyes met,
+and the full absurdity of the conversation became apparent.
+
+Still giggling, they went on their way, past the old smithy, where a
+pleasant breath of warmth and a splendid ringing of hammers came from
+the forge, and past the new garage of raw wood with the
+still-astonishing miracle of a "horseless carriage" in its big window,
+pots of paint and oil standing inside its door, and workmen, behind a
+barrier of barrels and planks, laying a cement sidewalk in front. They
+passed the Five-and-Ten-Cent Store, its unwashed windows jammed with
+pyramids of dry-looking chocolates, post cards, and jewellery, and
+festoons of trashy embroidery, and the corner fruit stands heaped with
+tomatoes and sprawling grapes. At the Palace Candy Store a Japanese boy
+in his shirt-sleeves was washing the show window, which was empty
+except for some rumpled sheets of sun-faded pink crepe paper. By the
+door stood two large wooden buckets for packing ice cream. The ice and
+salt were melted now, and the empty moulds, still oozing a little
+curdled pink cream, were floating in the dirty water.
+
+"Why aren't you girls at home sewing for the poor?" demanded a pleasant
+voice over their shoulders. The girls wheeled about to smile into the
+eyes of Father Martin. A tall spare old man, with enormous glasses on
+his twinkling blue eyes, spots and dust on his priestly black, and a
+few teeth missing from his kindly, big, homely mouth, he beamed upon
+them.
+
+"Well, how are ye? And your mother's well? Well, and what are ye
+buying--trousseaux?"
+
+"We're just looking, Father," Martie giggled. "Looking for husbands
+first, and then clothes!"
+
+Laughing, the girls walked with him across the street to Mallon's
+Hardware Emporium, where baskets of jelly glasses were set out on the
+damp sidewalk, with enamel saucepans marked "29c." and "19c." in black
+paint, carpet sweepers, oil stoves, and pink-and-blue glass vases. They
+went on to the shoe shop, to the grocery, to the post-office, past the
+express office, where Joe Hawkes sat whittling in the sun. They paused
+to study with eager interest the flaring posters on the fences that
+announced the impending arrival of Poulson's Star Stock Company, for
+one night only, in "The Sword of the King." They discovered with
+surprise that it was nearly twelve o'clock, bought five cents' worth of
+rusty, sweet, Muscat grapes, to be eaten on the way home, and turned
+their faces toward the bridge.
+
+But the morning, for Martie, had held its golden moment. When they
+passed the Bank, Sally had been dreaming, as Sally almost always was,
+but Martie's eyes had gone from shining gold-lettered window to window,
+and with that new, sweet suffocation at her heart she had found the
+object of her searching--the satiny crest of Rodney Parker's sleek
+hair, the fresh-coloured profile that had been in her waking and
+sleeping thoughts since yesterday. He was evidently hard at work;
+indeed he was nervous and discouraged, had Martie but known it; he did
+not look up.
+
+But Martie did not want him to look up. She wanted only the stimulation
+to her thoughts that the sight of him caused, the enchanting
+realization that he was there. She had a thrilling vision of herself
+entering that bank, a privileged person, "young Mrs. Rodney." Old Judge
+Parker coming out of his private office with his hands full of papers
+would nod to her with his fatherly smile, Rodney grin the proud yet
+embarrassed grin of a man confronted in office hours by his women-folk.
+
+Suddenly Martie decided that she would begin to save money. She and
+Sally had jointly fallen heir to a young Durham cow when Cousin Sally
+Buckingham died, and the cow being sold for thirty-five dollars,
+exactly seventeen dollars and fifty cents had been deposited in the
+bank in each girl's name. This was four years ago; neither one ever
+dreamed of touching the precious nest-egg; to them it represented
+wealth. Len had no bank account, nor had Mama nor Lydia. All Martie's
+dreams of the future began, included, or ended on the expenditure of
+this sum. It bought text books, wedding veils, railway tickets in turn.
+Now she thought that if she saved another dollar, and went into the
+Bank duly to deposit it, Rodney must see her, might even wait upon her;
+it would be a perfectly legitimate way of crossing his line of vision.
+
+The Monroes had plenty of spending money; for although their father was
+strongly opposed to the idea of making any child of his a definite
+allowance, he allowed them to keep the change whenever they executed
+small commissions for him, and to wheedle from him stray quarter and
+half dollars. Lydia had only to watch for the favourable moment to get
+whatever she asked, and with Leonard he was especially generous. Martie
+knew that she could save, if she determined to do so. She imagined
+Rodney's voice: "Bringing more money in? You'll soon be rich at this
+rate, Martie!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+A few days later Rodney Parker walked home from the village with Martie
+Monroe again. Meeting her in Bonestell's, he paid for her chocolate
+sundae, and on their way up Main Street they stopped in the Library, so
+that Miss Fanny saw them. Every one saw them: first of all generous
+little Sally, who was to meet Martie in Bonestell's, but who,
+perceiving that Rodney had joined her there, slipped away unseen, and,
+blindly turning over the ribbons on Mason's remnant counter, prayed
+with all her heart that Rodney would continue to fill her place.
+
+They walked up Main Street, Martie glancing up from under her shabby
+hat with happy blue eyes, Rodney sauntering contentedly at her side.
+
+How much he knew, how much he had done, the girl thought, with an ache
+of hopeless admiration. Almost every sentence opened a new vista of his
+experience and her ignorance. She did not suspect that he meant it to
+be so; she only felt dazzled by the easy, glancing references he made
+to men and books and places.
+
+They stopped at the railroad track to watch the eastward-bound train
+thunder by. Five hours out of San Francisco, its passengers looked
+quite at home in the big green upholstered seats. Bored women looked
+idly out upon little Monroe, half-closed magazines in their hands.
+Card-playing men did not glance up as the village flashed by. On the
+platform of the observation car the usual well-wrapped girl and
+pipe-smoking young man were carrying on the usual flirtation. Martie
+saw the train nearly every day, but never without a thrill. She said to
+herself, "New York!" as a pilgrim might murmur of Mecca or of Heaven.
+
+"That's a good train," said Rodney. "Let's see, this is Wednesday.
+They'll be in New York Sunday night. Awful place on Sunday--no
+theatres, no ball games, no drinks--"
+
+"I could manage without theatres or ball games," Martie laughed. "But I
+must have my whisky!"
+
+"It sounded as if I meant that, but you know me!" he laughed back.
+"Lord, how I'd like to show you New York. Wouldn't you love it!
+Broadway--well, it's a wonder! There's something doing every minute.
+You'd love the theatres--"
+
+"I know I would!" Martie assented, glowing.
+
+"My aunt lives there; she has an apartment right on the Park, at West
+Ninetieth," Rodney said. "Her husband has scads of money," the boy
+pursued. "You'll have to go on, Martie, there's no two ways about it."
+
+"And Delmonico's?" the girl suggested eagerly. "I've heard of
+Delmonico's!"
+
+"Delmonico's is where the wedding parties go. Of course, if you say so,
+Martie--"
+
+That was one of the sweet and thrilling things to remember. And there
+were other things to make Martie's heart dance as she set the dinner
+table. But she wondered if she should have asked him in.
+
+Martie stopped short, salt-cellars in her hand. How could she--with
+Pa's arrival possible at any moment. Besides she had asked him, as they
+lingered laughing at the gate. That was all right--it was late, anyway.
+He had gaily refused, and she had not pressed him. And, wonderful
+thought, they were going walking on Sunday.
+
+Monroe boys and girls usually walked on Sunday. They walked up the
+track to the Junction, or up between bare fields past the Poor House to
+the Cemetery. When a young man hired a phaeton at Beetman's, and took
+his girl for a drive on Sunday, it was a definite avowal of serious
+attachment. In that case they usually had their Sunday supper at the
+home of the young man's mother, or married sister, or with some female
+relative whose sanction upon their plans was considered essential.
+
+Rodney Parker was not quite familiar with this well-established
+precedent. His sisters were not enough of the village to be asked
+either to walk or drive with the local swains, and he had been away for
+several years. For two Sundays he walked with Martie, and then he asked
+her to drive.
+
+For the girl, these weeks were suffused with a tremulous and ecstatic
+delight beyond definition, beyond words. What she would not have dared
+to hope, she actually experienced. No need to boast before Sally and
+Grace and Florence Frost. They saw: the whole village saw.
+
+Martie bloomed like a rose. She forgot everything--Pa, Len, the gloomy
+home, the uncertain future--for joy. That her old hat was shabby and
+her clothes inappropriate meant nothing to Martie; ignorant, unhelped,
+she stumbled on her way alone. Nobody told her to pin her bronze braids
+more trimly, to keep her brilliant skin free from the muddying touch of
+sweets and pastries, to sew a hook here and catch a looping hem there.
+Nobody suggested that she manicure her fine big hands, or use some of
+her endless leisure to remove the spots from her blue silk dress.
+
+More; the family dared take only a stealthy interest in Martie's
+affair, because of Malcolm's extraordinary perversity and Len's young
+scorn. Malcolm, angered by Lydia's fluttered pleasure in the honour
+Rodney Parker was doing their Martie, was pleased to assume a high and
+mighty attitude. He laughed heartily at the mere idea that the
+attentions of Graham Parker's son might be construed as a compliment to
+a Monroe, and sarcastically rebuked Lydia when, on a Sunday afternoon,
+she somewhat stealthily made preparations for tea. Martie and Rod were
+walking, and Martie, before she went, had said something vague about
+coming back at half-past four.
+
+Lydia, abashed, gave up her plan for tea. But she did what she could
+for Martie, by inveigling her father into a walk. Martie and Rod came
+into an empty house, for Sally was out, no one knew where, and Mrs.
+Monroe had gone to church where vespers were sung at four o'clock
+through the winter.
+
+Martie's colour was high from fast walking in the cold wind, her eyes
+shone like sapphires, and her loosened hair, under an old velvet
+tam-o'-shanter cap, made a gold aureole about her face. Rodney,
+watching her mount the little hill to the graveyard with a winter
+sunset before her, had called her "Brunhilde," and he had been talking
+of grand opera as they walked home.
+
+Enchanted at finding the house deserted, she very simply took him into
+the kitchen. The kettle was fortunately singing over a sleeping fire;
+Rodney sliced bread and toasted it, while Martie, trying to appear
+quite at her ease, but conscious of awkward knees and elbows just the
+same, whisked from pantry to kitchen busily, disappearing into the
+dining room long enough to lay the tea cups and plates at one end of
+the big table.
+
+Only a few moments before the little feast was ready, Lydia came rather
+anxiously into the kitchen. She greeted Rodney smilingly, seizing the
+first opportunity for an aside to say to Martie:
+
+"Pa's home, Mart. And he doesn't like your having Rod out here. I
+walked him up to the Tates', but no one was home except Lizzie. Shame!
+He saw Rodney's cap in the hall--he's in the dining room." Aloud she
+said cheerfully: "I think this is dreadful--making you work so hard,
+Rod. Come--tea's nearly ready. You and I'll wait for it in the dining
+room, like the gentleman and lady we are!"
+
+"Oh, I'm having a grand time!" Rodney laughed. But he allowed himself
+to be led away. A few minutes later Martie, with despair in her heart,
+carried the loaded tray into the dining room.
+
+Her father, in one of his bad moods, was sitting by the empty
+fireplace. The room, in the early autumn twilight, was cold. Len had
+come in and expected his share of the unfamiliar luxury of tea, and
+more than his share of the hot toast.
+
+Rodney, unaffected by the atmosphere, gaily busied himself with the
+tray. Lydia came gently in with an armful of light wood which she laid
+in the fireplace.
+
+"There is no necessity for a fire," Malcolm said. "I wouldn't light
+that, my dear."
+
+"I thought--just to take the chill off," Lydia stammered.
+
+Her father shook his head. Lydia subsided.
+
+"We shall be having supper shortly, I suppose?" he asked patiently,
+looking at a large gold watch. "It's after half-past five now."
+
+"But, Pa," Lydia laughed a little constrainedly, "we never have dinner
+until half-past six!"
+
+"Oh, on week days--certainly," he agreed stiffly. "On Sundays, unless I
+am entirely wrong, we sit down before six."
+
+"Len," Martie murmured, "why don't you go make yourself some toast?"
+
+"Don't have to!" Len laughed with his mouth full.
+
+"Here--I'll go out and make some more!" Rodney said buoyantly, catching
+up a plate. Lydia instantly intervened; this would not do. Pa would be
+furious. Obviously Martie could not go, because in her absence Pa,
+Rodney, and Len would either be silent, or say what was better unsaid.
+Lydia herself went out for a fresh supply of toast.
+
+Martie was grateful, but in misery. Lydia was always slow. The endless
+minutes wore away, she and Rodney playing with their empty plates, Len
+also waiting hungrily, her father watching them sombrely. If Len hadn't
+come in and been so greedy, Martie thought in confused anger, tea would
+have been safely over by this time; if Pa were not there glowering she
+might have chattered at her ease with Rodney, no tea hour would have
+been too long. As it was, she was self-conscious and constrained. The
+clock struck six. Really it WAS late.
+
+The toast came in; Sally came in demurely at her mother's side. She had
+rushed out of the shadows to join her mother at the gate, much to Mrs.
+Monroe's surprise. Conversation, subdued but general, ensued. Martie
+walked boldly with Rodney to the gate, at twenty minutes past six, and
+they stood there, laughing and talking, for another ten minutes.
+
+When she went in, it was to face unpleasantness. Her mother, with her
+bonnet strings dangling, was helping Lydia hastily to remove signs of
+the recent tea party. Sally was in the kitchen; Len reading opposite
+his father.
+
+"Come here a minute, Martie," her father called as I the girl hesitated
+in the hallway. Martie came in and eyed him. "I would like to know what
+circumstances led to young Parker's being here this afternoon?" he
+asked.
+
+"Why--we were walking, and I--I suppose I asked him, Pa."
+
+"You SUPPOSE you asked him?"
+
+"Well--I DID ask him."
+
+"Oh, you DID ask him; that's different. You had spoken to your mother
+about it?"
+
+"No." Martie swallowed. "No," she said again nervously. There was a
+silence while her father eyed her coldly.
+
+"Then you ask whom you like to the house, do you? Is that the idea? You
+upset your mother's and your sister's arrangement entirely at your own
+pleasure?" he suggested presently.
+
+"I didn't think it was so much to ask a person to have a cup of tea!"
+Martie stammered, with a desperate attempt at self-defense. She felt
+tears pressing against her eyes. Lydia would have been meek, Sally
+would have been meek, but Martie's anger was her nearest weapon. It
+angered her father in turn.
+
+"Well, will you kindly remember in future that your ideas of what to
+ask, and what not to ask, are not the ideas by which this house is
+governed?" Malcolm asked magnificently.
+
+"Yes, sir." Martie stirred as if to turn and go.
+
+"One moment," Malcolm said discontentedly. "You thoroughly understand
+me, do you?"
+
+"Yes, sir." Martie's eyes met Len's discreetly raised over the edge of
+his book and full of reproachful interest. She went into the kitchen.
+
+The spell of a nervous silence which had held the dining room was
+broken. Mrs. Monroe and Lydia talked in low tones as they went to and
+fro; Len shifted his position; Sally coming in with a plate of sliced
+bread hummed contentedly. Martie appeared in her usual place at supper,
+not too subdued to win a laugh even from her father with some vivacious
+imitation of Miss Tate rallying the children for Sunday School.
+Happiness was bubbling like a spring in her heart.
+
+After dinner, the dishes being piled in the sink to greet Belle on
+Monday morning, she went to the piano and crashed into "Just a Song at
+Twilight," and "Oh, Promise Me," and "The Two Grenadiers." These and
+many more songs were contained in a large, heavy album entitled
+"Favourite Songs for the Home." Martie had a good voice; not better
+than Sally's or Lydia's, but Sally and Lydia rarely sang. Martie had
+sung to her own noisy accompaniment since she was a child; she loved
+the sound of her own voice. She had a hunger for accomplishment,
+rattled off the few French phrases she knew with an unusually pure
+accent, and caught an odd pleasing word or an accurate pronunciation
+eagerly on the few occasions when lecturers or actors in Monroe gave
+her an opportunity.
+
+To-night her father, in his library, heard the sweet, true tones of her
+voice in "Lesbia" and "Believe Me," and remembered his mother singing
+those same old songs. But when a silence followed he remembered only
+faulty Martie, awkwardly making Rodney Parker welcome at the most
+inconvenient time her evil genius could have suggested, and he
+presently went into the sitting room with the familiar scowl on his
+face.
+
+On the next Sunday Rodney hired a Roman-nosed, rusty white horse at
+Beetman's, and for two hours he and Martie drove slowly about. They
+drove up past the Poor House to the Cemetery, and into the Cemetery
+itself, where black-clad forms were moving slowly among the graves. The
+day was cold, with a bleak wind blowing; the headstones looked bare and
+forlorn.
+
+At half-past three, driving down the Pittsville road, back toward
+Monroe, Rodney said:
+
+"Why don't you come and have tea at our house, Martie?"
+
+Martie's heart rose on a great spring.
+
+"Why--would your mother--" She stopped short, not knowing quite how to
+voice her hesitation. Had she expressed exactly what was in her mind
+she might have said: "First, won't your mother and sisters snub me? And
+secondly, is it quite correct, from a conventional standpoint, for me
+to accept your casual invitation?"
+
+"Sure. Mother'll be delighted--come on!" Rodney urged.
+
+"I'd love to!" Martie agreed.
+
+"You know, the beauty about you, Martie, is that you're such a good
+pal," Rodney said enthusiastically as he drove on. "I've always wanted
+a pal. You and I like the same things; we're both a little different
+from the common run, perhaps--I don't want to throw any flowers at us,
+but that's true--and it's wonderful to me that living here in this hole
+all your life you're so up-to-date--so darned intelligent!"
+
+This was nectar to Martie's soul. But she had never been indulged so
+recklessly in personalities before, and she did not quite know how to
+meet them. She wanted to say the right thing, to respond absolutely to
+his mood; a smile, half-deprecating, half-charmed, fluttered on her
+lips when Rodney talked in this fashion, but even to herself her words
+seemed ill-chosen and clumsy. A more experienced woman, with all of
+Martie's love and longing surging in her heart, would have vouchsafed
+him just that casual touch of hand on hand, that slight, apparently
+involuntary swerve of shoulder against shoulder that would have brought
+the boy's arms about her, his lips to hers.
+
+It was her business in life to make him love her; the only business for
+which her mother and father had ever predestined her. But she knew
+nothing of it, except that no "nice" girl allowed a boy to put his arm
+about her or kiss her unless they were engaged. She knew that girls got
+into "trouble" by being careless on these matters, but what that
+trouble was, or what led to it, she did not know. She and Sally
+innocently believed that some mysterious cloud enveloped even the most
+staid and upright girl at the touch of a man's arm, so that of
+subsequent events she lost all consciousness. A girl might attract a
+man by words and smiles to the point of wishing to marry her, but she
+must never permit the slightest liberties, she must indeed assume, to
+the very day of her marriage, that the desire for marriage lived in the
+heart of the man alone.
+
+Martie never dreamed that the youth and sex within her had as definite
+a claim on her senses as hunger had in the hour before dinner time, or
+sleep had when she nodded over her solitaire at night. But she drank in
+enchantment with Rodney's voice, his laughter, his nearness, and the
+night was too short for her dreams or the days for her happiness.
+
+They left the Roman-nosed horse and the surrey at Beetman's livery
+stable, a damp and odorous enclosure smelling of wet straw, and with
+the rear quarters of nervous bay horses stirring in the stalls. The
+various men, smoking and spitting there in the Sunday afternoon
+leisure, knew Martie and nodded to her; knew who her companion was.
+
+Martie and Rodney walked down South California Street, into the town's
+nicest quarter, and passed the old-fashioned wooden houses, set far
+back in bare gardens: the Wests' with its wooden palings; the Clifford
+Frosts', with a hooded baby carriage near the side door; and the senior
+Frosts', a dark red house shut in by a dark red fence. The Barkers'
+house was the last in the row, rambling, ugly, decorated with knobs and
+triangles of wood, with many porches, with coloured glass frames on its
+narrow windows, yet imposing withal, because of its great size and the
+great trees about it. Martie had not been there since her childhood, in
+the days before Malcolm Monroe's attitude on the sewer and
+street-lighting questions had antagonized his neighbours, in the days
+when Mrs. Frost and Mrs. Parker still exchanged occasional calls with
+Martie's mother.
+
+The girl found strangely thrilling Rodney's familiarity here. He
+crossed the porch, opened the unlocked front door, and led Martie
+through a large, over-furnished hall and a large, stately drawing room.
+The rugs, lamps, chairs, and tables all belonged to entirely different
+periods, some were Mission oak, some cherry upholstered in rich
+brocade; there was a little mahogany, some maple, even a single
+handsome square chair of teakwood from the Orient. On the walls there
+were large crayon portraits made from photographs of the girls, and
+there were cushions everywhere, some of fringed leather, some of satin
+painted or embroidered, some of cigar ribbons of clear yellow silk,
+some with college pennants flaunting across them.
+
+Beyond this room was another large one, looking out on the lawn and the
+shabby willows at the side of the house. Into this room the more
+favoured one had been casting off its abandoned fineries for many
+years. There were more rugs, pillows, lamps, and chairs in here, but it
+was all more shabby, and the effect was pleasanter and softer. Ida's
+tea table stood by the hearth, with innovations such as a silver
+tea-ball, and a porcelain cracker jar decorated with a rich design in
+the minutely cut and shellacked details of postage stamps. A fire
+winked sleepily behind the polished steel bars of the grate, the
+western window was full of potted begonias and ferns, the air was close
+and pleasantly scented with the odour of a good cigar.
+
+Judge Parker, a genial man looking more than his fifty-five years, sat
+alone, smoking this cigar, and Martie, greeting him prettily, was
+relieved to find that she must not at once face the ladies of the
+house. Rather uncertainly she took off her hat, but did not remove the
+becoming blue sweater. She sat erect in a low, comfortable armchair
+whose inviting curves made her rigid attitude unnatural and difficult,
+and talked to the Judge. The old man liked all fresh young girls, and
+laughing with her, he vaguely wondered in his hospitable heart why
+Monroe's girls were not more often at the house.
+
+Ida and May, tall, colourless young women, presently came down. They
+noticed Martie's shoe-lacings and the frill of muddy petticoat, the
+ungloved hands and the absurdity of her having removed her hat, and
+told Rodney about these things later. At the time they only made her
+uncomfortable in quiet little feminine ways; not hearing her when she
+spoke, asking her questions whose answers must surely embarrass her.
+
+Tea came in. Martie smiled at Carrie David, who brought it. She liked
+Carrie, who was the Hawkes' cousin, but did not quite think she should
+speak to her here. Carrie, who was a big, gray-haired woman of fifty,
+was in the room only a moment after all.
+
+Judge Parker, amiably under the impression that young people were
+happier alone, went away to walk down Main Street, glancing at the sky
+and greeting his townspeople in his usual genial fashion. May poured
+the tea, holding Rodney in conversation the while. Ida talked to Martie
+in a vivacious, smiling, insincere way, difficult to follow.
+
+Martie listened sympathetically, more than half believing in the bright
+picture of social triumphs and San Francisco admirers that was
+presented her, even though she knew that Ida was twenty-six, and had
+never had a Monroe admirer. Dr. Ben had once had a passing fancy for
+May's company; May was older than Ida, and, though like her physically,
+was warmer and more human in type. But even this had never been a
+recognized affair; it had died in infancy, and the Parker girls were
+beginning to be called old maids.
+
+Rodney walked with Martie to the gate when she left, but no farther,
+and as she went on her way, uncomfortable thoughts were uppermost in
+her mind. Martie had never driven with a young man before, and so had
+no precedent to guide her, but she wondered if Rodney should not have
+gone with her to her own gate. Perhaps she had stayed too long--another
+miserable possibility. And how "snippy" Ida and May had been!
+
+Still, Monroe had seen her driving with Rodney, and she had had tea at
+the Parkers'! So much was gain. She had almost reached the shabby green
+gate that led into the sunken garden when Sally, flying up behind her
+in the dusk, slipped a hand through her arm. Martie, turning with a
+start and a laugh, saw Joe Hawkes, ten feet away, smiling at her.
+
+"Hello, Joe!" she said, a little puzzled. Not that it was not quite
+natural for Sally to stop and speak to Joe, if she wanted to; Joe had
+been a familiar figure in their lives since they were children. But--
+
+But Sally was laughing and panting in a manner new and
+incomprehensible. She caught Martie by both hands. All three, young and
+not understanding themselves or life, stood laughing a little vaguely
+in the sharp winter dusk. Joe was a mighty blond giant, only Martie's
+age, and younger, except in inches and in sinews, than his years. He
+had a sweet, simple face, rough, yellow hair, and hairy, red, clumsy
+hands. A greater contrast to gentle little Sally, with her timid brown
+eyes and the bloodless quiet of manner that was like her mother and
+like Lydia, could hardly have been imagined.
+
+"Where've you been?" Martie asked.
+
+"We've been to church!" dimpled Sally with a glance at Joe.
+
+The pronoun startled Martie.
+
+"We were up in the organ loft," Joe contributed with his half-laughing,
+half-nervous grin.
+
+Still bewildered, Martie followed her sister into the dark garden,
+after a good-night nod to Joe, and went into the house. Their father
+reluctantly accepted the girls' separate accounts of the afternoon:
+Sally had been in church, Martie had driven about with Rod and had gone
+to tea at his house. Lydia fluttered with questions. Who was there?
+What was said? Malcolm asked Martie where Rodney had left her.
+
+"At the gate, Pa," the girl responded promptly.
+
+All through the evening her eyes kept wandering in disapproval toward
+Sally. Joe Hawkes!--it was monstrous. That stupid, common lout of a
+boy--nearly two years her junior, too.
+
+They were undressing, alone in their room, when she spoke of the matter.
+
+"Sally," said she, "you didn't really go sit in the choir with Joe
+Hawkes, did you?"
+
+"Well--yes, in a way," Sally admitted, adding indulgently, "he's SUCH
+an idiot!"
+
+"How do you mean?" Martie asked sharply. For Sally to flush and dimple
+and give herself the airs of a happy woman over the calf-like
+attentions of this clumsy boy of nineteen was more than absurd, it was
+painful. "Sally--you couldn't! Why, you oughtn't even to be FRIENDS
+with Joe Hawkes!" she stammered. "He gets--I suppose he gets twenty
+dollars a month."
+
+"On, no; more than that!" Sally said, brushing her fine, silky,
+lifeless hair. "He gets twenty-five from the express company, and when
+he meets the trains for Beetman he gets half he makes."
+
+Martie stood astounded at her manner. That one of the Monroe girls
+should be talking thus of Joe Hawkes! What mattered it to Sarah Price
+Monroe how much Joe Hawkes made, or how? Joe Hawkes--Grace's
+insignificant younger brother! Sally saw her consternation.
+
+"Now listen, Mart, and don't have a fit," she said, laughing. "I'm not
+any crazier over Joe than you are. I know what Pa would say. I'm not
+likely to marry any one on thirty dollars a month, anyway. But listen,
+Joe has always liked me terribly--"
+
+"I never knew it!" Martie exclaimed.
+
+"No; well, neither did I. But last year when he broke his leg I used to
+go in and see him with Grace, and one day she left the room for a
+while, and he sort of--broke out--"
+
+"The GALL!" ejaculated Martie.
+
+"Oh, no, Mart--he didn't mean it that way. Really he didn't. He just
+wanted--to hold my hand, you know--and that. And he never thinks of
+money, or getting married. And, Mart, he's so GRATEFUL, you know, for
+just a moment's meeting, or if I smile at him, going out of church--"
+
+"I should think he might be!" Martie interpolated in fine scorn.
+
+"Yes, I know how you feel, Martie," Sally went on eagerly, "and that's
+true, of course. I feel that way myself. But you don't know how
+miserable he makes himself about it. And does it seem wrong to you,
+Mart, for me just to be kind to him? I tell him--I was telling him this
+afternoon--that some day he'll meet some nice sweet girl younger than
+he, and that he'll be making more money then--you know--"
+
+Her voice faltered. She looked wistfully at her sister.
+
+"But I can't see why you let a big dummy like that talk to you at all!"
+Martie said impatiently after a short silence. "What do you care what
+he thinks? He's got a lot of nerve to DARE to talk to you that way.
+I--well, I think Pa would be wild!"
+
+"Oh, of course he would," Sally agreed in a troubled voice. "And I know
+how you feel, Martie, with Joe's aunt working for the Parkers, and
+all," she added. "I'll--I'll stop it. Truly I will. I'm only doing it
+to be considerate to Joe, anyway!"
+
+"You needn't do anything on my account," Martie said gruffly. "But I
+think you ought to stop it on your own. Joe is only a kid, he doesn't
+know beans--much less enough to really fall in love!"
+
+She lay awake for a long time that night, in troubled thought. Cold
+autumn moonlight poured into the room; a restless wind whined about the
+house. The cuckoo clock struck eleven--struck twelve.
+
+At all events she HAD gone driving with Rodney; she HAD had tea at the
+Parkers'--
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+"I honestly think that some of us ought to go down to-night and see
+Grandma Kelly," said Lydia at luncheon a week later. November had come
+in bright and sunny, but with late dawns and early twilights. Rodney
+Parker's college friend having delayed his promised visit, the
+agitating question of the Friday Fortnightly had been temporarily laid
+to rest, but Martie saw him nearly every day, and family and friends
+alike began to change in their attitude to Martie.
+
+"I'll go," she and Sally said together--Martie, because she was in a
+particularly amiable mood; Sally, perhaps because old Mrs. Kelly was
+Joe Hawkes's grandmother.
+
+"Well, I wish you would, girls," their mother said in her gentle,
+complaining voice. "She's a dear old lady--a perfect saint about
+getting to church in all weathers! And while Pa doesn't care much about
+having you so intimate with the Hawkeses, he was saying this morning
+that Grandma Kelly is different. She was my nurse when all four of you
+were born, and she certainly was interested and kind."
+
+"We can go down about seven," Lydia said, "and not stay too long. But I
+suppose 'most every one in Monroe will run in to wish her many happy
+returns. Tom David's wife will come in from Westlake with Grandma's
+great-grandchildren, I guess, and all the others will be there."
+
+"That houseful alone would kill me, let alone having the whole tribe
+stream in, if _I_ were seventy-eight!" Martie observed. "But I'd just
+as soon go. We'll see how we feel after dinner!"
+
+And after dinner, the night being fresh and sweet, and the meal early
+concluded because Malcolm was delayed in Pittsville and did not return
+for dinner, the three Monroes pinned on their hats, powdered their
+noses, and buttoned on their winter coats. Any excitement added to her
+present ecstatic mood was enough to give Martie the bloom of a wild
+rose, and Sally had her own reasons for radiance. Lydia alone, walking
+between them, was actuated by cool motives of duty and convention and
+sighed as she thought of the heat and hubbub of the Hawkes's house, and
+the hour that must elapse before they were back in the cool night again.
+
+The Hawkeses had always lived in one house in Monroe. It was a large,
+square, cheap house near the bridge, with a bare yard kept shabby by
+picking chickens, and a fence of struggling pickets. Behind the house,
+which had not been painted in the memory of man, was a yawning barn
+which had never been painted at all. In the yard were various odds and
+ends of broken machinery and old harness; a wagon-seat, on which
+Grandma sometimes sat shelling beans or peeling potatoes in the summer
+afternoons; old brooms, old saucepans, and lengths of rope, clotted
+with mud. Fuchsia and rose-bushes languished in a tipsy wire enclosure
+near the front door.
+
+To-night, although the yard presented a rather dismal appearance in the
+early winter dark, the house was bursting with hospitality and good
+cheer. From every one of the bare high windows raw gushes of light
+tunnelled the gloom outside, and although the cold outside had frosted
+all the glass, dim forms could be seen moving about, and voices and
+laughter could be heard.
+
+Martie briskly twisted the little rotary bell-handle that was set in
+the centre of the front door, and before its harsh noise had died away,
+the door was flung open and the Monroe sisters were instantly made a
+part of the celebration. Hilarious members of the family and their even
+more hilarious friends welcomed them in; the bare hallway was swarming
+with young persons of both sexes; girls were coming down the stairs,
+girls going up, and the complementary boys lined the wall, or,
+grinning, looked on from the doorways.
+
+The front room on the left, usually a bedroom, was used for a smoking
+room to-night; the dining-room door had been locked, but on the right
+two doors gave entrance to the long parlours, and here were older men,
+older women--Mrs. Hawkes, big, energetic, perspiring all over her
+delighted face; Carrie David, wild with hospitable excitement; and Joe
+Hawkes, Senior, a lean little eager Irishman, quite in his glory
+to-night. Throned on a sort of dais, in the front bay window, was
+Grandma Kelly, a little shrivelled beaming old woman, in a crumpled,
+shining, black satin gown. Her hair was scanty, showing a wide bald
+parting, and to hear in all the confusion she was obliged occasionally
+to cup one hand behind her ear, but her snapping eyes were as bright as
+a monkey's and her lips, over toothless gums, worked constantly with a
+rotary motion as she talked and laughed. On each side of her were
+grouped other old ladies--Mrs. Sark, Mrs. Mulkey, Mrs. Hansen, and Mrs.
+Mussoo--her friends since the days, fifty years before, when they had
+crossed the plains in hooded wagons, and fought out their simple and
+heroic destinies on these strange western prairies.
+
+They had borne children, comforting and caring for each other in the
+wilderness; they had talked of wolves and of Indians while trusting
+little hands caught their knees and ignorant little lips pulled at
+their breasts; they had known fire and flood and famine, crude offense
+and cruder punishment; they had seen the Indians and the buffalo go
+with the Missions and the sheep; they had followed the gold through its
+sensational rise to its sensational fall, and had held the wheat
+dubiously in their fingers before ever California's dark soil knew
+it--had wondered whether the first apple trees really might come to
+blossom and bear where the pines were cleared away.
+
+And now, with the second and third generation, had come schools and
+post-offices, cable cars and gaslight; villages were cities; crossroads
+were towns. At seventy-eight, Grandma Kelly was far from ready for her
+nunc dimittis. Great days had been, no doubt, but great days were also
+to be. Children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren kept the house
+swarming with life, and she could never have enough of it.
+
+The air, never too fresh in the Hawkes's house, was hot and charged
+with odours of cheap cologne, of powder, of human bodies, and of
+perspiration-soaked garments. The very gaslights screamed above the din
+as if they found it contagious. Large crayon portraits decorated the
+walls, that of the late Mr. Kelly having attached to its frame the
+sheaf of wheat that had lain on his coffin. On the walls also were the
+large calendars of insurance companies, and one or two china plaques in
+plush frames. A bead portiere hung between the two parlours, constantly
+clicking and catching as the guests swarmed to and fro. All the chairs
+in the house had been set about the walls, and all were occupied. A
+disk on the phonograph was duly revolving, in charge of a hysterical
+girl in blue silk and a flushed, humorous young man, but the music was
+almost unheard.
+
+Whatever their attitude toward this merrymaking had previously been,
+the Monroe girls were instantly drawn into the spirit of the occasion.
+Martie and Sally were dragged upstairs, where they left hats and coats,
+were taken downstairs again with affectionate, girlish arms about their
+waists; and found themselves laughing and shouting with the rest. Towed
+through the boiling crowd to Grandma, they kissed the cool, soft old
+face. They greeted the other old women with pretty enthusiasm.
+
+Lydia meanwhile had decorously delivered her message of good wishes and
+had drifted to a chair against the wall, where matrons greeted her
+eagerly and where, in her own way, she began to enjoy herself.
+Sentiment, hospitality, gaiety filled the air.
+
+"Isn't Grandma wonderful?" said all the voices, over and over. "I think
+she's wonderful! Mrs. Hawkes had a dinner for just the five old ladies,
+you know. Wasn't that sweet? The family had to have their dinner
+earlier--just the five old ladies. Wasn't that a cute idea? Ellen said
+they looked perfectly dear, all together! Mary Clute couldn't get here
+from San Francisco, you know, but she sent Grandma a tea-pot cover--the
+cutest thing! Did you see the Davids' baby? It's upstairs, I guess;
+it's a darling little thing! Think of it, three great-grandchildren!
+Oh, I do, too; I think it's a lovely party--I think the rooms look
+lovely--I think it was an awfully cute idea!"
+
+The oldest David grandchild, becoming sodden with sleepiness, climbed
+into Lydia's lap. Sally, after exchanging a conscious undertone with
+young Joe, slipped through the dining-room door with him, and happily
+joined the working forces in the kitchen. In her mind Sally knew that
+the Hawkeses were but homely folk; she knew that any Monroe should
+shrink from this hot and noisy kitchen. But Sally's heart welcomed the
+eager bustle, the tasks so imperative that her timid little entity was
+entirely forgotten, the talk that was friendly and affectionate and
+comprehensible.
+
+Joe and she laughed over piecing tablecloths together for the long
+table, and kept a jingling ripple of laughter accompanying the jingling
+of plated spoons and the thick glasses. Ellen and Grace, as the family
+debutantes, were inside with the company, but Carrie and Min, the
+married daughters, were here, with old Mrs. Crowley, who never missed
+an occasion of this kind, Mrs. Mulkey's daughter Annie Tate, Gertie
+Hansen, and an excited fringe of children too young to dance and too
+old to be sent off to bed.
+
+As it was the custom for the more intimate friends to bring a cake, a
+pan of cookies, or a great jug of strong lemonade to such an affair,
+there was more food than twice this surging group of men, women, and
+children could possibly consume, so that the boys and girls could keep
+their mouths full of oily, nutty, walnut wafers and broken bits of
+layer cake without any conscientious scruples. One of the large kitchen
+tables was entirely covered with plates bearing layer cakes, with
+chocolate, maple, shining white, and streaky orange icings, or topped
+with a deadly coating of fluffy cocoa-nut. On the floor half a dozen
+ice cream freezers leaked generously; at the sink, Mrs. Rose, who had
+been Minnie Hawkes, was black and sticky to the elbows with lemon juice.
+
+Meanwhile Martie, more in tune with the actual jollity than either of
+her sisters, was warming to her most joyous mood. Her costume of thin
+white waist and worn serge skirt might have been considered deficient
+in a more formal assembly, but here it passed without comment; the
+girls' dresses varied widely, and no one seemed any the less gay. Grace
+had a long streamer of what appeared to be green window-net tied
+loosely about a worn pink satin slip; Elsa Prout wore the shepherdess
+costume she had made for the Elks' Hallowe'en Dance, and Mrs. Cazley,
+sitting with her back against the wall, wore her widow's bonnet with
+its limp little veil falling down to touch her fresh white shirtwaist.
+Martie improved her own costume by pinning a large pink tissue-paper
+rose against her high white stock, and fastening another in her bronze
+hair; the girls laughed appreciatively at her audacity; a vase of the
+paper roses had been in the parlour for years. Youth and excitement did
+the rest.
+
+Here, where her motives could not be misunderstood, where her presence
+indeed was to be construed as adding distinction and dignity to the
+festivities, Martie could be herself. She laughed, she flirted with the
+common yet admiring boys, she paid charming attention to the old women.
+A rambling musical programme was presently set in motion; Martie's
+voice led all the voices. She was presently asked to sing alone, and
+went through "Believe Me" charmingly, putting real power and pathos
+into the immortal words. Returning, flushed and happy in a storm of
+clapping, to her place between Al Lunt and Art Carter on the sofa, she
+kept those appreciative youths in such convulsions of laughter that
+their entire neighbourhood was sympathetically affected. Carl Polhemus,
+who played the organ at church, had begun a wandering improvisation on
+the piano, evidently so taken with certain various chords and runs that
+he could not resist playing them passionately over and over. A
+dangerous laugh, started among the younger set, began to strangle and
+stifle his audience. Martie, looking straight ahead of her, gave only
+an occasional spasmodic heave of shoulders and breast, but her lips
+were compressed in an agony, and her eyes full of tears. From the
+writhing boys on each side of her came frequent smothered snorts.
+
+In upon this scene came old Dr. Ben, who had worked hand in hand with
+Grandma Kelly in the darkened rooms where many of these hilarious
+youngsters had drawn their first breath. Although the infatuated
+musician did not stop at this interruption, many of his listeners rose
+to greet the newcomer, and the tension snapped.
+
+Dr. Ben sat down next to the old lady, and the room, from which the
+older guests were quietly disappearing, was enthusiastically cleared
+for dancing. The air, close already, became absolutely insufferable
+now; the men's collars wilted, the girls' flushed faces streamed
+perspiration. But the cool side-porch was accessible, and the laughter
+and noise continued unabated.
+
+Quietly crossing the dark backyard for his horse and buggy at ten
+o'clock, Dr. Ben came upon Joe Hawkes sitting on the shadowy steps
+with--he narrowed his eyes to make sure--yes, with little Sally Monroe.
+The old man formed his lips into a slow, thoughtful whistle as he
+busied himself with straps and buckles. Slowly, thoughtfully, he
+climbed into his buggy.
+
+"Sally!" he called, sitting irresolute with the reins in his hands.
+
+The opaque spot that was Sally's gown did not stir in the shadows.
+
+"Sally!" he called again. "I see ye, and Joe Hawkes, too. Come here a
+minute!"
+
+She went then, slowly into the clear November moonlight.
+
+"What is it, Doc' Ben?" she asked, in a rather thick voice and with a
+perceptible gulp. Even in this light he could see her wet lashes
+glitter.
+
+For a minute he did not speak, fat hands on fat knees. Sally, innocent,
+loving, afraid, hung her head before him.
+
+"Like Joe, do ye, Sally?" said the mild old voice.
+
+"I--" Sally's voice was almost inaudible--"why, I don't know, Doc,
+Ben," she faltered. "My mother--my father--" she stopped short.
+
+"Your father and mother, eh?" Dr. Ben repeated musingly, as if to
+himself.
+
+"I couldn't like--any one--if it was to make all the people who love me
+unhappy, I suppose," Sally said in her mild, prim voice, with an effort
+at lightness. "No happiness could come of that, could it, Doctor?"
+
+To this dutiful expression the doctor made no immediate answer,
+observing in a dissatisfied tone, after a pause: "That sounds like your
+mother, or Lydia."
+
+Sally, leaning against the shabby cushions of the carriage, looked down
+in silent distress.
+
+"There never could be anything serious between Joe Hawkes and I," she
+said presently, with a little unnatural laugh. She was not quite sure
+of her pronoun. She looked anxiously at Dr. Ben's face. It was still
+troubled and overcast. Sally wondered uncomfortably if he would tell
+her mother that she was seeing Joe frequently. As it chanced, she and
+Joe had more than once encountered the old man on their solitary walks
+and talks. She thought, in her amiable heart, that if she only knew
+what Dr. Ben wanted her to say she would say it; or what viewpoint he
+expected her to take she would assume it.
+
+"Joe and I were helping Mrs. David," she submitted timidly, "and we
+came out to sit in the cool."
+
+"Don't be a hypocrite, Sally," the doctor said absently. Sally laughed
+with an effort to make the conversation seem all a joke, but she was
+puzzled and unhappy. "Well," said the doctor suddenly, gathering up his
+reins and rattling the whip in its socket as a gentle hint to the old
+mare, "I must be getting on. I want you to come and see me, Sally. Come
+to-morrow. I want to talk to you."
+
+"Yes, sir," Sally answered obediently. She would have put out her
+tongue for his inspection then and there if he had suggested it.
+
+When the old phaeton had rattled out of the yard she went back to the
+shadows and Joe. She was past all argument, all analysis, all reason,
+now. She hungered only for this: Joe's big clean young arms about her;
+Joe's fresh lips, with their ignorant passion, against hers. For years
+she had known Joe only by sight; a few months ago she had been merely
+amused and flattered by the boy's crudely expressed preference; even
+now she knew that for a Monroe girl, at twenty-one, to waste a thought
+on a Hawkes boy of nineteen was utter madness. But a week or two ago,
+walking home from church with her mother and herself on Sunday night,
+Joe had detained her for a moment under the dooryard trees--had kissed
+her. Sally was like a young tiger, tamed, petted, innocuous, whose
+puzzled lips have for the first time tasted blood. Every fibre in her
+being cried for Joe, his bashful words were her wisdom, his nearness
+her very breath and being.
+
+She clung to him now, in the dark kitchen porch, in a fever of pure
+desire. Their hearts beat together. Sally's arms were bent against the
+boy's big chest, as his embrace crushed her; they breathed like runners
+as they kissed each other.
+
+A moment later they went back into the kitchen to scoop the hard-packed
+ice cream into variegated saucers and enjoy unashamedly such odd bits
+of it as clung to fingers or spoon. The cakes had all been cut now,
+enormous wedges of every separate variety were arranged on the plates
+that were scattered up and down the long stretch of the table in the
+dining room. The dancers and all the other guests filed out to enjoy
+the supper, the room rang with laughter and screamed witticisms. A
+popular feature of the entertainment was the mottoes, flat scalloped
+candies of pink and white sugar, whose printed messages caused endless
+merriment among these uncritical young persons. "Do You Love Me?"; "I
+Am A Flirt"; "Don't Kiss Me"; "Oh, You Smarty," said the mottoes
+insinuatingly, and the revellers read them aloud, exchanged them,
+secreted them, and even devoured them, in their excessive delight.
+
+Presently they all toasted Grandma Kelly in lemonade. The old lady,
+with Lydia and some of the older women, was enjoying her cake and cream
+in the parlour, but tears of pride and joy came to her eyes when the
+young voices all rose with lingering enjoyment on "Silver Threads Among
+the Gold," and there was a general wiping of eyes at "She's a Jolly
+Good Fellow" which followed it. Then some of the girls rushed in to
+kiss her once more, and, as it was now nearly twelve o'clock, Lydia
+called her sisters, and they said their good-nights.
+
+Walking home under a jaded moon, yawning and cold in the revulsion from
+hours of excitement and the change from the heated rooms to the cold
+night air, Lydia was complacently superior; they were certainly
+warm-hearted, hospitable people, the Hawkeses, and she was glad that
+they, the Monroes, had paid Grandma the compliment of going. Sally,
+hanging on Lydia's arm, was silent. Martie, on her other arm, was
+smilingly reminiscent. "That Al Lunt was a caution," she observed.
+"Wasn't Laura Carter's dance music good? Wasn't that maple walnut cake
+delicious?" She had eaten goodness knows how much ice cream, because
+she sat at table between Reddy Johnson and Bernard Thomas, and every
+time Carrie David or any one asked them if they wanted any more ice
+cream, Bernie had put their saucers in his lap, and told Carrie that
+they hadn't had any yet.
+
+Len suddenly came up behind his sisters, frightening them with a deep
+"Boo!" before he emerged from the blackness to join them.
+
+"Javva good time?" he asked, adding carelessly, "I was there."
+
+"Yes, you were!" Martie said incredulously. "You wish you were!"
+
+"Honest, I was," Len said. "Honest I was, Lyd."
+
+"Well, you weren't there until pretty late, Len," Lydia said in mild
+disapproval.
+
+"Lissun," Len suggested pleadingly. "Tell Pa I brought you girls home
+from Hawkes's--go on! Lissun, Lyd, I'll do as much for you some time--"
+
+"Oh, Len, how can I?" Lydia objected.
+
+"Well, I went in, honest, early in the evening," the boy asserted
+eagerly. "But I can't stand those boobs and roughnecks, so I went down
+town for a while. Then I came back and waited until you girls came out
+of the gate. I'll cross my heart and hope to die if I didn't!"
+
+"If Pa asks me--" Lydia said inexorably.
+
+For a few moments they all walked together in the dark. Then Len said
+suddenly:
+
+"Say, Mart, I saw Rod Parker to-night. He was down town, and he asked
+me how my pretty sister was!"
+
+"Did he?" Martie spoke carelessly, but her heart leaped.
+
+"He talked a lot about you," went on Len, "he's going to call you up in
+the morning about something."
+
+"Oh--?" Martie mused. "I shouldn't wonder if it was about a dance we
+were talking about," she said thoughtfully. She was quite acute enough
+to see perfectly that Len was trying to enlist her silence in his cause
+should their father make a general inquiry, and philosophical enough to
+turn his mood to her own advantage. "Lissun, Len," said she, "if I try
+to have a party you'll get the boys you know to come, won't you? There
+are always too many girls, and I want it to go off nicely. You will,
+won't you?"
+
+"Sure I will," Len promised heartily. He and his sister perfectly
+understood each other.
+
+They all went quietly upstairs; Len to dreamless sleep, Sally to
+thrilled memories of Joe--Joe--Joe, and Martie to shifting happy
+thoughts of the evening and its little triumphs, thoughts that always
+came back to Len's talk with Rodney. Rodney had asked Len for his
+pretty sister.
+
+Lydia lay wide awake for a long time. There was no doubt of it now; she
+and her mother had told each other several times during the last month
+or two that there was still doubt. But she was not mistaken to-night in
+thinking that Len's breath was strong from something alcoholic, that
+Len's eager, loose-lipped speech, his unusual manner--She went over and
+over the words she would use in telling her mother all about it in the
+morning. The two women would carry heavy hearts on Len's account for
+the whole cold, silent day. But they would not tell Pa--no, there was
+nothing sufficiently serious as yet to tell Pa!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Martie and Sally loitered through the village, past the post-office and
+the main shops and down through the poorer part of the town. They
+entered a quiet region of shabby old houses, turned into a deserted
+lane, and opened the picket gate before Dr. Ben's cottage. The little
+house in winter stood in a network of bare vines; in summer it was
+smothered in roses, and fuchsias, marguerites, hollyhocks, and
+geraniums pressed against the fence. Marigolds, alyssum, pansies, and
+border pinks flourished close to the ground, with sweet William, stock,
+mignonette, and velvet-brown wallflowers. Dr. Ben had planted all these
+himself, haphazard, and loved the resulting untidy jumble of bloom,
+with the lilac blossoms rustling overhead, birds nesting in his willow
+and pepper trees, and bees buzzing and blundering over his flowers.
+
+The house was not quite definite enough in type to be quaint; it
+presented three much-ornamented gables to the lane, its windows were
+narrow, shuttered inside with dark brown wood. At the back-between the
+house and the little river, and shut away from the garden by a
+fence--were a little barn, decorated like the house in scalloped wood,
+and various small sheds and out-houses and their occupants.
+
+Here lived the red cow, the old white mare, the chickens and pigeons,
+the rabbits and bees that had made the place fascinating to Monroe
+children for many years. Martie said to herself to-day that she always
+felt like a child when she came to Dr. Ben's, shut once more into
+childhood's world of sunshine and flowers and happy companionship with
+animals and the good earth.
+
+To-day the old man, with his setter Sandy, was busy with his
+bookshelves when the girls went in. Two of the narrow low bay windows
+that looked directly out on the level of the kitchen path were in this
+room; the third, the girls knew, was a bedroom. Upstairs were several
+unused rooms full of old furniture and piles of magazines, and back of
+the long, narrow sitting room were a little dining room with Crimson
+Rambler roses plastered against its one window, and a large kitchen in
+which old Mis' Penny reigned supreme.
+
+Here in the living room were lamps, shabby chairs, an air-tight stove,
+shells, empty birds' nests, specimens of ore, blown eggs, snakeskins,
+moccasins, wampum, spongy dry bees' nests, Indian baskets and rugs,
+ropes and pottery, an enormous Spanish hat of yellow straw with a gaudy
+band, and everywhere, in disorderly cascades and tumbled heaps, were
+books and pamphlets and magazines.
+
+Dr. Ben welcomed them eagerly and sent Martie promptly to the kitchen
+to interview Mis' Penny on the subject of tea. The girls were quite at
+home here, for the old doctor was Rose Ransome's mother's cousin, and
+through their childhood the little gabled house had been the favourite
+object of their walks. Sally, alone with her host, began to help him in
+his hopeless attempt to get his library in order.
+
+"The point is this, Sally," said Dr. Ben suddenly, after a few
+innocuous comments on the weather and the health of the Monroe family
+had been exchanged. "Have you and Joe Hawkes come to care for each
+other?"
+
+Sally flushed scarlet. She had been thinking hard--for Sally, who was
+not given to thought--in the hours since the party for Grandma Kelly.
+Now she began readily, with a great air of frankness.
+
+"I'll tell you, Dr. Ben. I know you feel as if I was trying to hide
+something from Ma and Pa, and it's worried me a good deal, too. But the
+truth is, I've known Joe all my life, and he's only a boy, of
+course--ever so much younger than I am--and he has just gotten this
+notion into his head. Of course, it's perfectly ridiculous--because
+naturally I am not going to throw my life away in any such fashion as
+that! But Joe thinks now that he will never smile again--"
+
+Thus Sally, kneeling among the books, her earnest, pretty, young face
+turned toward the doctor, her eyes widely opened, as the extraordinary
+jumble of words poured forth. The unpleasant sensation of their last
+meeting, the confusing feeling that she was not saying what Dr. Ben
+wanted her to say, beset her. She felt a sudden, dreadful inclination
+toward tears, although with no clear sense of a reason for crying.
+
+"I suppose all boys go through their silly stages like measles," said
+Sally rapidly. "And it's only my misfortune and Joe's that his first
+love affair had to be me. One reason why I haven't mentioned it at home
+is--"
+
+"Then you don't care for Joe?" the old man asked with his serious smile.
+
+"Oh, Dr. Ben! Of course, I like Joe enormously, he's a dear sweet boy,"
+Sally answered smoothly. "But you know as well as I do how my father
+feels toward the village people in Monroe, and while the Hawkeses are
+just as nice as they can be in their way--" again Sally's flow of
+eloquence was strangely shaken; she felt as a child might, caught up in
+the arm of a much larger person and rushed along helplessly with only
+an occasional heartening touch of her feet to the ground--"after all,
+that isn't quite our way, is it?" she asked. If only, thought the
+nervous little girl who was Sally, if only she knew what Dr. Ben wanted
+her to say!
+
+"Why can't ye be honest with me, Sally?" said the doctor. "Ye love Joe,
+don't ye?"
+
+Sally's head dropped, the colour rose in her cheeks, and the tears
+came. She nodded, and through all her body ran a delicious thrill at
+the acknowledged passion.
+
+"Ye've found each other out, in spite of them all!" said the old man
+musingly. "And what does his age or yours, or his place or yours,
+matter beside that? They've tried to fill you with lies, and you've
+found that the lies don't hold water. Well--"
+
+He straightened up suddenly, and began to march about the room. Sally,
+kneeling still over the books, tears drying on her cheeks, watched him.
+
+"Sally," said the doctor, "God made you and Joe Hawkes and your love
+for each other. I don't know who made the social laws by which women
+govern these little towns, but I suspect it was the devil. You've been
+brought up to feel that if you marry a man Mrs. Cy Frost doesn't ask to
+her house, you'll be unhappy ever after. But I ask you, Sally--I ask
+you as a man old enough to be your father--if you had your home, your
+husband, your health, your garden, and your children, wouldn't you be a
+far happier woman than--than Lydia say, or Florence Frost, or all the
+other girls who sit about this town waiting for a man with position
+enough--position, BAH!--to marry?"
+
+Sally's face was glowing.
+
+"Oh, Dr. Ben, _I_ don't care anything about position!" she said, all
+her honest innocence in her face.
+
+"Then why do you act as if you did?" he said, well pleased.
+
+"And would you advise me to marry Joe?" she asked radiantly.
+
+"Joe--Tom--Billy, whomever you please!" he answered impatiently. "But
+don't be afraid because he doesn't wear silk socks, Sally, or smoke a
+monogrammed cigarette. Why, my child, that little polish, that little
+fineness, is the woman's gift to her man! These Frosts and Parkers: it
+was the coarse strength of their grandfathers that got them across the
+plains; it was the women who packed the books in the horsehair trunks,
+that read the Bibles and cleaned and sewed and prayed in the old home
+way. You don't suppose those old miners and grocers, who came later to
+be the city fathers, ever had as much education as Joe Hawkes, or half
+as much!"
+
+"I wish my father felt as you do, Doc' Ben," Sally said presently, the
+brightness dying from her face. "But Pa will never, never--And even if
+there were no other reason, why Joe hasn't a steady job--"
+
+"That brings me to what I really want to say to you to-day, Sally," the
+old man interrupted her briskly. He opened a desk drawer and took from
+it a small, old-fashioned photograph. Sally saw a young woman's form,
+disguised under the scallops, ruffles, and pleats of the early
+seventies, a bright face under a cascade of ringlets, and a little oval
+bonnet set coquettishly awry. "D'ye know who that is?" asked Dr. Ben.
+
+"I--well, yes; I suppose?" murmured Sally sympathetically.
+
+"Yes, it's my wife," he answered. "Mary--Our boy would be thirty. They
+went away together--poor girl, poor girl! We wanted a big family,
+Sally; we hoped for a houseful of children. And I had her for only
+fifteen months--only fifteen months to remember for thirty years!"
+
+Sally was deeply impressed. She thought it strangely flattering in Dr.
+Ben to take her into his confidence in this way, and that she would
+tell Martie about it as they walked home.
+
+"No," he said musingly. "I never had a child! And Sally, if I had it
+all to do over again, I'd marry again. I'd have sons. That's the
+citizen's duty. Some day we'll recognize it, and then you bearers of
+children will come into your own. There'll be recognition for every one
+of them, we'll be the first nation to make our poor women proud and
+glad when a child is coming. It's got to be, Sally."
+
+Sally was listening politely, but she was not interested. She had heard
+all this before, many times. Dr. Ben's extraordinary views upon the
+value of the family were familiar to every one in Monroe. But her
+attention was suddenly aroused by the mention of her own name.
+
+"Now, supposing that you and Joe take it into your heads to get married
+some day," the doctor was saying, "how about children?"
+
+Sally's ready colour flooded her face. She made no attempt to answer
+him.
+
+"Would ye have them?" the old man asked impatiently.
+
+"Why--why, Dr. Ben, I don't know!" Sally said in great confusion. "I--I
+suppose people DO."
+
+"You suppose people do?" he asked scornfully. "Don't ye KNOW they do?"
+
+"Well, I don't suppose any girl thinks very much of such things until
+she's married," Sally said firmly. "Mama doesn't like us to discuss--"
+
+"Doesn't your mother ever talk to you about such things?" the old man
+demanded.
+
+"Certainly not!" Sally answered with spirit.
+
+"What DOES she talk to you about?" he asked amazedly. "It's your
+business in life, after all. She's not taught ye any other. What does
+she expect ye to do--learn it all after it's too late to change?"
+
+"All what?" Sally said, a little frightened, even a little sick. He
+stopped his march, and looked at her with something like pity.
+
+"All the needs of your soul and body," he said kindly, "and your
+children's souls and bodies. Well! that's neither here nor there. But
+the fact is this, Sally: I've no children of my own to raise. And as ye
+very well know, I've got my own theories about putting motherhood on a
+different basis, a business basis. I want you to let me pay you--as the
+State ought to pay you--three hundred a year for every child you bear.
+I want to demonstrate to my own satisfaction, before I try to convince
+any Government, that if the child-bearing woman were put on a plane of
+economic value, her barren, parasite sister would speedily learn--"
+
+Sally had turned pale. Now she rose in girlish dignity.
+
+"I hope you'll forgive me, Dr. Ben, for saying that I won't listen to
+ONE word more. I know you've been thinking about these things so long
+that you forget how OUTRAGEOUS they sound! Motherhood is a sacred
+privilege, and to reduce it to--"
+
+"So is wifehood, Sally!" the old man interposed soothingly.
+
+"Well," she flashed back, "nobody's PAID for wifehood!"
+
+"Oh, yes, my dear. You can sue a man for not supporting you. It's done
+every day!"
+
+"Then--then a man ought to pay the three hundred a year!" countered
+Sally.
+
+"Well, I'm with you there. But the world has got to see that before you
+can force him." The doctor sighed. "So you won't let me stand
+grandfather to your children, Sally?"
+
+"Oh, if you WERE their grandfather!" she answered. "Then you could do
+as you liked!"
+
+"There you are, the parasite!" he said, smiling whimsically. "You're
+your mother's daughter, Sally. Give you the least blood-claim on a
+man's money, and you'll push it as far as you can. But offer to pay you
+for doing the work God meant you to do and you're cut to the soul.
+Well--"
+
+He was still holding forth eloquently on the subject of children and
+nations when Martie came back, and Sally, with a scarlet face, was
+evidently lost in thoughts of her own.
+
+As the girls walked home, Sally did not repeat to Martie her
+conversation with the old doctor, nor for many weeks afterward. But
+Martie did not notice her sister's indignant silence, for they met
+Rodney Parker coming out of the Bank, and he walked with them to the
+bridge, and asked Martie to go with him to see the Poulson Star Stock
+Company in a Return Engagement Extraordinary on the following night.
+
+Martie was conscious of passing a milestone in her emotional life on
+the evening of this day, when she said to herself that she loved Rodney
+Parker. She admitted it with a sort of splendid shame, as she went
+about her usual household occupations, passing from the hot
+pleasantness of the kitchen to the cool, stale odours of the dining
+room; running upstairs to light the bathroom-and hall-gas for her
+father and brother, and sometimes stepping for a moment into the
+darkness of the yard to be alone with her enchanted thoughts.
+
+All the young Monroes regarded their father's temperamental
+shortcomings with stoicism, so that it was in no sense resentfully that
+she faced the inevitable preliminaries that night.
+
+"Pa," said she cheerfully over the dessert, "you don't mind if I go to
+the show with Rodney to-morrow, do you?"
+
+"This is the first I've heard of any show," Malcolm said stiffly,
+glancing at his wife. Mrs. Monroe patiently told him what she knew of
+it. "Why, no, I suppose there is no reason you shouldn't go," he
+presently said discontentedly.
+
+"Oh, thank you, Pa!" Martie said, with a soaring heart. He looked at
+her dispassionately.
+
+"Your sisters and your brother are going, I suppose?" Malcolm asked,
+glancing about the circle. Martie told herself she might have known he
+was not done with the subject so easily.
+
+"I'm not--because I haven't the price!" grinned Leonard. His mother and
+Lydia laughed.
+
+"I don't suppose Martie proposes going alone with young Parker?"
+Malcolm asked in well-assumed amazement.
+
+"Why, Pa--I don't see why NOT" Mrs. Monroe protested weakly.
+
+Her husband was magnificent in his surprise. He looked about in a sort
+of royal astonishment.
+
+"Don't you, my dear?" he asked politely. "Then permit me to say that
+_I_ DO."
+
+Martie sat dumb with despair.
+
+"Certainly Martha may go, if Leonard and one of her sisters go; not
+otherwise," said Malcolm. He retired to his library, and Martie had to
+ease her boiling heart by piling the dinner dishes viciously, and
+question no more.
+
+However, she consoled herself, there was something rather dignified in
+this arrangement, after all; Len was presentable, and she was always
+the happier for being with Sally. She washed her only gloves, pressed
+her suit, and spent every alternate minute during the next day
+anxiously inspecting her chin where an ugly pimple threatened to form.
+The family was again at dinner when Len broached a change of plan.
+
+"Can I go up to Wilson's to-night, Pa?" he asked. Martie flashed him a
+glance.
+
+"I suppose so, for a little while," Malcolm said tolerantly. The girls
+looked at each other.
+
+"But I thought you were going to the Opera House with us?" Martie
+exclaimed.
+
+"Well, now you know I ain't," Len answered airily.
+
+"I am not, Len," corrected his mother. Martie gave him a look of hate.
+
+"Len says he promised to go to Wilson's," Lydia said placatingly. "So I
+thought perhaps Sally and I would go with you--I'm sorry, Martie!"
+
+For Martie's breast was heaving dangerously.
+
+"Pa, didn't you say Len was to go with us?" she asked with desperate
+calm.
+
+"I said SOME ONE was to go," Malcolm said, disapproving of her
+vehemence. "I confess I cannot see why it must be Len!"
+
+"Because--because when a man asks a girl to go out with him he doesn't
+ask the whole FAMILY!" Martie muttered in a fury. Her lip trembled, and
+she got to her feet. "It doesn't matter in the least," she said in a
+low, shaking voice, "because I am not going myself!"
+
+Flashing from the room, she ran upstairs. She flung herself across her
+bed, and cried stormily for ten minutes. Then she grew calmer, and lay
+there crying quietly, and shaken by only an occasional long sob. It was
+during this stage that Lydia came into the room, and sitting down
+beside Martie's knees, patted her hand soothingly. Lydia's weak
+acceptance of the younger sister's distaste for her company gave Martie
+a sort of shamed heart-sickness.
+
+"Don't!" said she huskily, jerking her arm away.
+
+But Lydia was not to be rebuffed, and Martie was but nineteen, after
+all, and longing for the happiness she had denied. An hour later, all
+the prettier for her tears, she met Rodney at the hall door, the boy
+making no sign of disappointment when Lydia and Sally joined them.
+
+"But say, Martie," he said at once, "I've got only the two seats!"
+
+"Oh, that's all right!" Lydia said quickly and cautiously. "We don't
+have to SIT together!"
+
+Martie's mood brightened and she flushed like a rose when the boy said
+eagerly:
+
+"Say, listen, Martie. My sister Ida's going to-night, and one or two
+others, and Mrs. Cliff Frost is going to chaperon us afterward; ask
+your mother if that's all right."
+
+The girl wasted no time on her mother, but crossed to the library door.
+
+"Pa," said she without preamble, "Mrs. Cliff Frost is chaperoning some
+of them after the theatre tonight. Can I go?"
+
+"Go where? Shut that door," her father said, half turning.
+
+"Oh--I don't know; to the hotel, I suppose."
+
+"Yes," her father said in a dry voice. "Yes," he added unwillingly. "Go
+ahead."
+
+So the evening was a great success; one of the memorable times. Martie
+and Rodney walked ahead of her sisters down town, the boy gallantly
+securing the girls' tickets before he and Martie went up the aisle to
+their own seats. All Monroe was in the Opera House. Martie bowed and
+smiled radiantly. Rodney's sister and Mrs. Frost and a strange man
+presently returned her smile.
+
+"Rod--wouldn't you rather be with your own family?"
+
+"Well--what do you think?"
+
+The enchantment of it, the warmth and stimulus of his admiration, his
+absorbed companionship, how they changed the world for Martie! There
+was a witchery in the air, the blood ran quick in her veins. The dirty
+big hall, with its high windows, was fairyland; the whispering crowd,
+Rodney's nearness, and the consciousness of her own youth and beauty,
+her flushed cheeks and loosened bronze hair, acted upon Martie like
+strong wine. She grew lovely beneath his very eyes; she was nineteen,
+and she loved!
+
+They talked incessantly, elaborating the simple things they said with a
+by-play of eyes and hands, making the insignificant words rich with
+lowered tones, with smiles and the meeting of eyes. He told Martie of
+his college days; borrowing episodes at random from the lives of other
+men, men whom he admired. Martie believed it all, believed that he had
+written the Junior Farce, that he had been president of his class, that
+the various college societies had disputed for his membership. In
+return, she spun her own romances, flinging a veil of attractive
+eccentricity over her father's character, generously giving Lydia an
+anonymous admirer, and painting the dreary old mansion of North Main
+Street as a sort of enchanted prison with her pretty restless self as
+captive therein. The two exchanged brief French phrases, each believing
+the other to have a fair command of the language, and Martie even
+quoted poetry, to which Rodney listened in intense silence, his eyes
+fixed upon hers.
+
+Suddenly the house was darkened and the curtain rose. The play was "The
+Sword of the King," a drama that seemed to Martie well suited to her
+own exalted mood. She thought the whole company wonderful, the leading
+lady especially gifted. She learned with awe that Rodney had known
+Wallace Bannister, the leading man, more or less intimately for years.
+An aunt of his lived in Pittsville and the two had met as boys and
+later had been classmates for the brief period Bannister had remained
+at the Leland Stanford University. Martie wrapped her beauty-starved
+young soul in the perfect past, when men wore ruffles and buckles and
+capes, and were all gallantry and courage, and when women were
+beautiful and desired. Between the acts the delicious exchange of
+confidences between herself and Rodney went on; they nibbled
+Bonestell's chocolates from a striped paper bag as they talked, and
+when the final curtain fell on a ringing line there were real tears of
+pleasure in Martie's eyes.
+
+"Oh, Rodney--this is LIVING!" she whispered, as they filed slowly out.
+
+Sally and Lydia had considerately disappeared. Mrs. Clifford Frost was
+waiting for them at the door, and Martie, with quick tact, fell into
+conversation with the kindly matron, walking at her side down the
+crowded street, and leaving Rodney to follow with the others. Little
+Ruth Frost had had some trouble fearfully resembling diphtheria, and
+Martie's first interested question was enough to enlist the mother's
+attention. The girl did not really notice the others in the party.
+
+They crossed muddy Main Street, passed Wilkins's Furniture and Coffin
+Parlours, and went into the shabby French restaurant known as Mussoo's.
+The little eating house, with its cheap, white-painted shop window,
+looking directly upon the sidewalk, its pyramid of oyster shells
+cascading from a box set by the entrance, its jangling bell that the
+opening door set to clanging, its dingy cash register, damp
+tablecloths, and bottles of red catsup, was not a place to which Monroe
+residents pointed with pride. Martie would ordinarily have passed it as
+one unaware of its existence.
+
+But it seemed a thoroughly daring and exciting thing to come here
+to-night; quite another thing from going to the hotel for vanilla ice
+cream and chocolate--even supposing the hotel had kept its dining room
+open for a change, after the six o'clock supper--or to Bonestell's for
+banana specials. This--this was living! Martie established herself
+comfortably in the corner, slipped off her coat, smiled lazily at
+Rodney's obvious manipulation of the party so that he should be next
+her, played with her hot, damp, blackened knife and fork, and was in
+paradise.
+
+Ida Parker was in the party, and Florence Frost. The men were Clifford
+Frost, a pleasant young man getting stout and bald at forty; Billy
+Frost, a gentle little lad of fifteen who was lame; Rodney, and a
+rosy-cheeked, black-moustached Dr. Ellis from San Francisco, whose
+occasional rather simple and stupid remarks were received with great
+enthusiasm by Ida and Florence.
+
+In this group Martie shone. She had her own gift for ready nonsense,
+and she was the radiant element that blended the varied types into a
+happy whole. She skilfully ignored Rodney; Billy, Mary, Cliff, and even
+Dr. Ellis were drawn into her fun. Rodney glowed. "Isn't she great?" he
+said to Mary Frost in an aside.
+
+A large bowl of small crackers was set before them, damp squares of
+strong butter on small nicked plates, finally a bowl of pink, odorous
+shrimps. These were all gone when, after a long wait, the fried oysters
+came smoking hot, slipped straight from the pan to the plates. Martie
+drank coffee, as Mary did; the others had thick goblets of red wine.
+With the hot, warming food, their gaiety waxed higher; everybody felt
+that the party was a great success.
+
+The bell on the door reverberated, and a man came in alone, and looked
+about undecidedly for a seat.
+
+"Hello!" said Rodney. "There's Wallace Bannister!"
+
+The young actor joined them. And this, to Martie, was one of the most
+thrilling moments of her life. He quite openly wedged his way in to sit
+on the other side of her; he said that he could see they didn't need
+the gaslight when Miss Monroe was along. Rodney said she was Brunhilde,
+and Bannister's comment was that she could save wig bills with that
+hair! Florence said eagerly that she loved Brunhilde--let's see, what
+opera did that come in? It was the Ring, anyway. The spirits of the
+group rose every second.
+
+Ah, this was living--thought Martie. Oysters and wine and a real actor,
+a man who knew the world, who chattered of Portland, Los Angeles, and
+San Francisco as if they had been Monroe and Pittsville. It was
+intoxicating to hear him exchanging comments with Rodney; no, he hadn't
+finished "coll." "I'm a rolling stone, Miss Monroe; we actor-fellows
+always are!" He was "signed up" now; he gave them a glimpse of a long,
+typewritten contract. Martie ventured a question as to the leading lady.
+
+"She's a nice woman," said Wallace Bannister generously. "I like to
+play against Mabel. Jesse Cluett, her husband, is in the play; and his
+kid, too, her stepson--Lloyd--he's seventeen. Ever try the profession,
+Miss Monroe?"
+
+Martie flushed a pleased disclaimer. But the tiny seed was sown,
+nevertheless. She liked the question; she was even vaguely glad that
+Mrs. Cluett was forty and a married woman.
+
+Wallace Bannister was older than Rodney, thirty or thirty-two, although
+even off the stage he looked much younger. He had dipped into college
+work in a dull season, amusing himself idly in the elementary classes
+of French and English where his knowledge in these branches gave him
+immediate prominence--and drifting away in a road company after only a
+few months of fraternity and campus popularity. His mother and father
+were both dead; the latter had been a theatrical manager in a small
+way, sending little stock companies up and down the coast for one-night
+stands.
+
+Bannister was tall, well-built, and handsome. His cheeks had a fresh
+fullness, and his black hair was as shining as wet coal. He was eager
+and magnetic; musical, literary, or religious, according to the company
+in which he found himself. Martie's thrilled interest firing him
+to-night, he exerted himself: told stories in Chinese dialect, in
+brogue, and with an excellent Scotch burr; he went to the rickety
+piano, and from the loose keys, usually set in motion by a nickel in
+the slot, he evoked brilliant songs, looking over his shoulder with his
+sentimental bold eyes at the company as he sang. And Martie said to
+herself, "Ah--this IS life!"
+
+Rodney took her home, the clock in the square booming the half hour
+after midnight as they went by. And at the side door he told her to
+look up at the Dipper throbbing in the cool sky overhead. Martie knew
+what was coming, but she looked innocently up, and went to sleep for
+the first time in her life with a man's kiss still tingling on her
+smiling lips.
+
+The cold November weather might have been rosy June; the dull routine
+of the Monroe home a life rich and full for Martie now. She sang like a
+lark, feeding the chickens in the foggy mornings; she dimpled at her
+own reflection in the mirror; she walked down town as if treading the
+clouds. Anything interested her, everything interested her. Mrs. Harry
+Locker, born Preble, said that Martie just seemed inspired, the way she
+talked when old lady Preble died. Miss Fanny, in the Library, began to
+entertain serious hopes that the girl would take the Cutter system to
+heart, and make a clever understudy at the old desk. Sally, watching,
+dreamed and yearned of Martie's distinction, Martie's happiness; Lydia
+prayed. Malcolm Monroe, as became a man of dignity, ignored the whole
+affair, but Len, realizing that various advantages accrued, befriended
+his sister, and talked to Rodney familiarly, as man to man.
+
+"I can't stand that fresh kid!" said Rodney of Len. Martie shrugged
+without speaking. She owed Len no allegiance. Had it suited Rodney to
+admire Len, Martie would have been a loyal sister. As it was, she would
+not risk a difference with Rodney for any one like Len. She was
+embarked now upon a vital matter of business. Had a few hundreds of
+dollars been involved, Malcolm Monroe would have been at her elbow,
+advising, commending. As it was, her happiness, her life, her children,
+her whole future might be jeopardized or secured with no sign from him.
+Interference from her mother or sisters would have been considered
+indelicate. So Martie stood alone.
+
+Immediately after the theatre party, the question of a series of dances
+again arose, and Martie somewhat hesitatingly repeated her offer of the
+Monroe house for the first. Rodney's friend, Alvah Brigham, was to come
+to the Parker family for Thanksgiving; the dance was to be on Friday
+night, and a large picnic to Brewster's Woods on Saturday. They would
+take a lunch, build a fire for their coffee, and have the old
+school-day programme of singing and games.
+
+For the dance, the two big parlours and the back room must be cleared;
+that was simple enough. Angela Baxter would be at the piano for the
+music; sufficient, if not extraordinary, and costing only two dollars.
+The supper would be sandwiches, cake, coffee, and lemonade: Monroe's
+invariable supper. Rodney thought ices necessary, and suggested at
+least a salad. Martie and Sally considered the salad.
+
+"Lord, I wish we could have a punch," Rodney complained. The girls
+laughed.
+
+"Oh, Rod--Pa would explode!"
+
+"Darn it," the boy mused, "I don't see WHY. He's not a teetotaler."
+"Well, I know," Martie conceded. "But that's different, of course!
+No--we can't have punch. I don't know how to make it, anyway--" She was
+hardly following her own words. Under them lay the wonderful
+consciousness that Rodney Parker was here at the house, sitting on the
+porch steps on a warm November morning, as much at home as Leonard
+himself. The sun was looking down into the dark garden, damp paths were
+drying in sudden warmth after a rain.
+
+In such an hour and such a mood, Martie felt absolutely confident that
+the dance would be a great success. More; it seemed to her in the
+heartening morning sunlight that it would be the first of many such
+innocent festivities, and that before it was over--before it was over,
+she and Rodney might have something wonderful to tell the girls and
+boys of Monroe.
+
+But in the long winter afternoons her confidence waned a little, and at
+night, dreaming over her cards, she began to have serious misgivings.
+Then the old house seemed cold and inhospitable and the burden of
+carrying a social affair to success fell like a dreadful weight on the
+girl's soul. Mama, Lydia, and Sally would cooperate to the best of
+their power, of course; Pa and Len might be expected to make themselves
+as annoying as possible.
+
+Supper, decorations, even the question of gowns paled before the task
+of making a list of guests. Sally and Martie early realized that they
+must inevitably hurt the feelings and disappoint the trust of more than
+one old friend. Mrs. Monroe and Lydia grew absolutely sick over the
+necessity.
+
+"Ma, this is just for the younger set," Martie argued. "And if people
+like Miss Fanny and the Johnsons expect to come to it, why, it's
+ridiculous, that's all!"
+
+"I know, dear, but it's the first party we have given in YEARS" her
+mother said plaintively, "and one hates to--"
+
+"What I've DONE" said Martie in a worried tone, "is write down all the
+POSSIBLE boys in Monroe, even counting Len and Billy Frost, and Rod,
+and Alvah Brigham. Then I wrote down all the girls I'd like to ask if I
+COULD, and there were about fourteen too many. So now I'm scratching
+off all the girls I CAN--"
+
+"I do think you ought to ask Grace Hawkes!" Lydia said firmly and
+reproachfully.
+
+"Well, I can't!" Martie answered quickly. "So it doesn't matter what
+you think! I beg your pardon, Lyd," she added penitently, laying her
+hand on Lydia's arm. "But you know Rodney's sisters would die if Grace
+came!"
+
+"Well, I think it's a mistake to slight Grace," Lydia persisted.
+
+Martie studied her pencilled list gloomily for a few seconds.
+
+"Sometimes I wish we weren't having it!" she said moodily.
+
+"Oh, Martie, when we've always said we'd give ANYTHING to entertain as
+other people do!" Sally exclaimed. "I DO think that's unreasonable!"
+
+Martie made no answer. She was looking at a memorandum which read:
+"Invitations--cream--Angela--stamps--illusion--slippers."
+
+As the days went by the thought of the dance grew more and more
+troublesome. The details of the affair were too strange to be entered
+into with any confidence, any rush of enthusiasm and spontaneity. Every
+hour brought her fresh cause for worry.
+
+Nothing went well. The thought of her dress worried her. She had
+conceived the idea of a black gown ornamented with cretonne roses,
+carefully applied. She and Sally cut out the flowers, and applied them
+with buttonhole stitch, sewing until their fingers were sore, their
+faces flushed, and their hair in frowsy disorder. It was slow work.
+Miss Pepper, the seamstress, engaged for one day only to do the
+important work on both Sally's and Martie's gown, kept postponing, as
+she always did postpone, the day, finally appointing the Wednesday
+before Thanksgiving Day. Pa's cousin, a certain Mrs. Potts, wrote from
+Portland that she was coming down for the holiday, and Sally and Martie
+could have wept at the thought of the complication of having her
+exacting presence in the house. Worse than this Pa, who was to have
+gone to San Francisco on business on Friday morning--whose decision to
+do so had indeed been one of Martie's reasons for selecting this date
+for the affair--suddenly changed his plan. He need not go until
+December, he said.
+
+Leonard, who at first had been faintly interested in the proceedings,
+later annoyed his sisters by intimating that he would not be present at
+the dance. Martie and Sally did not want him for any social qualities
+he possessed, but he was a male; he would at least help to offset the
+alarming plurality of females.
+
+Acceptances came promptly from the young women of Monroe, even from Ida
+and May Parker. Florence Frost regretted; she was smitten even now with
+the incurable illness that would end her empty life a few years later.
+Such men as Martie and Sally had been able to list as eligible--the new
+young doctor from the Rogers building, little Billy Frost, the
+Patterson boys, home from college for Thanksgiving, Reddy Johnson, and
+Carl Polhemus--answered not at all, as is the custom with young men.
+Sally and Martie did not like the Patterson boys; George was fat and
+stupid; Arthur at eighteen sophisticated and blase, with dissipated
+eyes; both were supercilious, and the girls did not really believe that
+they would come. Still, there was not much to lose in asking them.
+
+There had been a debate over Reddy Johnson's name; but Reddy was a
+wonderful dancer. So he was asked, and Martie went so far as to say
+that had Joe Hawkes possessed an evening suit, he and Grace might have
+been asked, too. As it was, Sally and Martie hoped they would not meet
+Grace until the affair was over.
+
+They fumed and fussed over the list until they knew it by heart. They
+wondered who would come first, how soon they should begin dancing, how
+soon serve supper. Mrs. Monroe thought supper should be served at
+half-past ten. Martie groaned. Oh, they couldn't serve supper until
+almost midnight, she protested.
+
+Dinner was at noon on Thanksgiving Day, and the Monroes, sated and
+overwarm, were sitting about the fire when Rodney Parker and his
+friend, Alvah Brigham, came to take Martie and Sally walking. The girls
+were sewing at the endless roses; but they jumped up in a flutter, and
+ran for hats and sweaters. They did not exchange a word, nor lose a
+second, while they were upstairs, running down again immediately to end
+the uncomfortable silence that held the group about the fire.
+
+It was a cold, bleak day, and the pure air was delicious to Martie's
+hot cheeks after the close house. She had immediately taken possession
+of Alvah; Sally and Rodney followed. They took the old bridge road,
+which the girls loved for the memory of bygone days, when they had
+played at dolls' housekeeping along the banks of the little Sonora,
+climbed the low oaks, and waded in the bright shallow water. Even
+through to-day's excitement Martie had time for a memory of those
+long-ago summer afternoons, and she said to herself with a vague touch
+of pain that it would of course be impossible to have with any man the
+serene communion of those days with Sally.
+
+Mr. Brigham was a pale, rather fat young man with hair already
+thinning. He did not have much to say, but he was always ready to
+laugh, and Martie saw that he had cause for laughter. She rattled on
+recklessly, anxious only to avoid silence; hardly conscious of what she
+said. The effect of the cool, fresh air was lost upon Martie to-day;
+she was fired to fever-pitch by Rodney's nearness.
+
+He had not ever said anything exactly loverlike, she said to herself,
+with a sort of breathless discontent, when she was setting the table
+for a cold supper that night. But he had brought his friend to them
+after all! She must not be exacting. She had so much--
+
+"I beg your pardon, Cousin Allie?" she stammered. Her obnoxious
+relative, a stout, moustached woman of fifty, warming her skirts at the
+fire, was smiling at her unkindly.
+
+"You always was a great one to moon, Martha!" said Mrs. Potts, "I's
+asking you what you see in that young feller to make such a to-do
+about?"
+
+"Then you don't like him?" Martie countered, laughing. Mrs. Potts
+bridled. Her favourite attitude toward life was a bland but suspicious
+superiority; she liked to be taken seriously.
+
+"I didn't say I didn't like him," she answered, accurately, a little
+nettled. "No, my dear, I didn't say that. No. I wouldn't say that of
+any young man!" she added thoughtfully.
+
+Smiling a dark smile, she looked into the fire. Martie, rather
+uncomfortable, went on with her task.
+
+"He's seemed to admire our Mart in a brotherly sort of way since the
+very beginning," Lydia explained, anxious as usual to say the kind
+thing, and succeeding as usual in saying the one thing that could hurt
+and annoy. "He's quite a boy for the girls, but we think our Martie is
+too sensible to take him seriously, yet awhile!" And Lydia gave her
+sister a smile full of sweet significance.
+
+"HOPE she is!" Mrs. Potts said heavily. "For if that young feller means
+business I miss MY guess!"
+
+"Oh, for pity's sake--can't a man ask a girl to go walking without all
+this fuss!" Martie burst out angrily. "I NEVER heard so
+much--crazy--silly--talk--about--nothing!"
+
+The last words were only an ashamed mumble as she disappeared
+kitchenward.
+
+"H'm!" said Mrs. Potts, eying Lydia over her glasses. "Kinder touchy
+about him just the same. Well! what's he to that young feller used to
+come see you, Lydia? Ain't the Frosts and the Parkers kin?"
+
+"I really think she's the most detestable old woman that ever was!"
+Martie said, when the three girls were going to bed that night. Lydia,
+loitering in her sister's room for a few minutes, made no denial.
+
+"Well, by this time to-morrow night the party will be nearly over!"
+yawned Sally.
+
+Martie looked at the clock. A quarter past eleven. What would be
+happening at quarter past eleven to-morrow night?
+
+The girls awakened early, and were early astir. A rush of preparation
+filled the morning, so soothing in its effect upon nerves and muscles
+that Martie became wild with hope. The parlours looked prettier than
+the girls had ever seen them; the pungent sweetness of chrysanthemums
+and evergreen stealing into the clean, well-aired spaces, and bowls of
+delicious violets sending out currents of pure perfume. Martie swept,
+straightened, washed gas globes, shook rugs. She gathered the flowers
+herself, straightening the shoulders that were beginning to ache as she
+arranged them with wet, cool fingers. Sally was counting napkins,
+washing china and glass. Belle dragged through the breakfast dishes.
+Lydia was capably mixing the filling for sandwiches. Outside, the
+morning was still; fog dripped from the trees. Sometimes the sudden
+sputtering chuckle of disputing chickens broke the quiet; a fish cart
+rattled by unseen, the blare of the horn sending Mrs. Monroe with a
+large empty platter to the gate.
+
+At two o'clock Lydia and Martie walked down town for the last shopping.
+Martie was aware, under the drumming excitement in her blood, that she
+was already tired. But to buy bottled cherries for the lemonade, olives
+for the sandwiches, and flat pink and white mint candies was
+exhilarating, and Reddy Johnson's cheery "See you to-night, Martie!"
+made her blue eyes dance with pleasure. After all, a dance was no such
+terrible matter!
+
+They were in Mason and White's, seated at a counter, in consultation
+over a purchase of hairpins, when two gloved hands were suddenly
+pressed over Martie's eyes, and a joyous voice said "Hello!" The next
+instant Rose's eyes were laughing into hers.
+
+"Rose Ransome!" Martie and Lydia said together. The two younger girls
+began to chatter eagerly.
+
+Why, when had she gotten home? Only this morning. And oh, it did seem
+so good to be home! And how was everybody? And how was college? Oh,
+fine! And was she still at the same house? Oh, yes! And so poor old
+Mrs. Preble was dead? Uncle Ben had felt so badly--
+
+"Say, Rose, we're having a sort of party to-night," Martie said
+awkwardly, and with a certain hesitation. Details followed. Rose, as
+pretty as a bird in her little checked suit and feathered hat, listened
+with bright interest. "Why can't you come?" Martie finished eagerly.
+"The more the merrier!"
+
+"Well--no." Rose hesitated prettily. "My first evening at home, you
+know--I think I hadn't better. I'd love to, Martie. And about the
+picnic to-morrow; that I CAN do! What'll I bring?"
+
+"Rose is a sweet little thing," Lydia said, when the sisters were
+walking home again. "I'm sorry she can't come to-night; she has a way
+of making things GO."
+
+Martie did not answer. She was mentally, for the hundredth time,
+putting on the black gown with the pink roses stitched all about the
+flounce, and piling up her bronze hair.
+
+The short afternoon waned, fog closing in the village again with the
+dark. Martie and Sally came down to supper with thin little crepe
+wrappers over their crisp skirts and best stockings and slippers. Both
+girls had spent the late afternoon in bathing, taking last stitches,
+laughing and romping over the upper floor, but the blazing colour in
+their faces now was as much from nervous fatigue as from excitement.
+Neither was hungry, nor talkative, and Mrs. Potts and their father
+monopolized the conversation.
+
+Len was sulky because he had played his usual game badly this evening,
+and chance failing him had favoured the girls. He had asked to be
+excused from the party, to their deep but unexpressed indignation, and
+had almost won his father's consent to a request to go down town a
+while, when a casual inquiry from Malcolm as to what he intended to do
+down town inspired Len to a reminiscent chuckle and an artless
+observation that gee! he might get a chance to sit outside of the hotel
+and watch Colonel Frost's new automobile for him, if the Colonel, as
+was usual, came down to the monthly meeting of the Republican Club.
+
+For a few seconds Malcolm did not sense the full indignity of his son's
+position as groom for Cyrus Frost. When he did, Leonard had a bad
+quarter of an hour, and was directed to get into his Sunday suit, make
+himself as useful and agreeable to his sisters as was possible, and let
+his father hear no more of this nonsense about old Frost and his
+automobile.
+
+Chuckling over this turn of events, the girls went upstairs to finish
+dressing. Sally, in an old pink gown, freshly pressed, was pretty; but
+Martie, turning flushed and self-conscious from the dim old mirror, was
+quite lovely. The black gown made her too-generous figure seem almost
+slender; the cretonne roses glowed richly against the black, and
+Martie's creamy skin and burnished hair were all the more brilliant for
+the contrast. Her heart rose buoyantly as she realized the success of
+the gown, and she ran downstairs with sudden gay confidence in herself
+and her party.
+
+Her father and mother, with Mrs. Potts, had considerately disappeared.
+Malcolm had gone down town; the ladies, wrapped in shawls, were
+gossiping in Mrs. Potts's vaultlike chamber. Lydia was moving about in
+the downstairs rooms.
+
+"Oh, Martie, Rose telephoned," Lydia said as her sister came in, "and
+she says that Mr. Rice and her mother say she must come up to-night, if
+it's only for a little while. She's going to bring her violin."
+
+"Oh, that's good," Martie answered absently, sitting down to play "The
+Two Grenadiers" with great spirit. "There's some one now, Lyd!" she
+added in a half panic, as the doorbell rang. Lydia, her colour rising
+suddenly, went to the door, raising her hand above as she passed under
+the gaslight to turn the lights to their full brilliancy. The first
+arrival was Angela Baxter, with her music roll under her arm. She
+kissed Lydia, and went upstairs with Sally.
+
+Then there were other feet on the porch: in came the German girls and
+Laura Carter, hooded in knitted fragile scarfs, and wrapped in pale
+blue and pink circular capes edged narrowly with fluffy eiderdown.
+Elmer King, hoarsely respectful, and young Potter Street followed.
+Martie, taking the girls upstairs, called back to them that she would
+send Len down. While they were all in Lydia's room, laying off wraps
+and powdering noses, Maude Alien came up, and "Dutch" Harrison's older
+sister Kate, and Amy Scott, and Martie was so funny and kept them all
+in such roars of laughter that Sally was conscious of a shameless wish
+that this was what Monroe called a "hen party," with no men asked. Then
+they could have games, Proverbs and even Hide-the-Thimble, and every
+one would feel happy and at home.
+
+When they went down Robert Archer, a quiet mild young man who was in
+the real estate business, had come; and he and Elmer and Potter were
+sitting silently in the parlour. Martie and Sally and the other girls
+went in, and every one tried to talk gaily and naturally as the young
+men stood up, but there seemed to be no reason why they should not all
+sit down, and, once seated, it seemed hard to talk. What Martie said
+was met with a nervous glimmer of laughter and a few throaty
+monosyllables.
+
+Sally wanted to suggest games, but did not dare. Martie, and indeed
+every one else, would have been glad to play Proverbs and Twenty
+Questions, but she did not quite like to begin anything so childish at
+a real dance. She looked at the clock: just nine. The evening was yet
+young.
+
+Suddenly Angela Baxter stopped murmuring to Lydia, and began to rattle
+a quick two step from the piano. Robert Archer, sitting next to Martie,
+asked her at once to dance, and Potter Street asked Sally, but both
+girls, glancing self-consciously at their guests, declined, and the
+young men subsided. So nobody danced the first dance, and after it
+there was another lull. Then Martie cheerfully asked Angela for a
+waltz, and said bravely:
+
+"Come on, some of you, DO dance this! I can't because I'm hostess."
+
+At this there was some subdued laughter, and immediately the four young
+men found partners, and two of the girls danced together. Then little
+Billy Frost came in, and after him, as fresh and sweet as her name,
+came Rose with the Monroe's only dentist, Bruce Tate. Dr. Tate was a
+rather heavy young man, flirtatious and conceited.
+
+Rose put her violin on the piano, and explained that she had met Rodney
+Parker that afternoon, "hadn't seen him for YEARS!" and that he had
+talked her into coming. No--she wouldn't play until later laughed Rose;
+now she wanted to dance.
+
+The hours that followed seemed to Martie like years. She never forgot
+them. She urged her guests into every dance with almost physical force;
+she felt for the girls who did not dance a nervous pity. Ida and May
+came in: neither danced, nor was urged to dance. They went home at ten
+o'clock. It was immediately afterward that Rodney came with his friend.
+Martie met them in the hall, ready for the intimate word, the smile
+that should make all this tiresome business of lights and piano and
+sandwiches worth while. Rodney was a little flushed and noisy, Alvah
+red-faced, breathing and speaking a little thickly. They said they were
+thirsty.
+
+"Lemonade?" Martie suggested confidently.
+
+Rodney glanced quickly at his friend. "Oh, Gawd!" said Mr. Brigham
+simply.
+
+Then they were in the hot parlour, and Martie was introducing them to a
+circle that smiled and said "Pleased to meet choo," over and over.
+Alvah would not dance, remarking that he hated dancing. And
+Rodney--Rodney had eyes for no one but Rose. Martie saw it, every one
+saw it.
+
+Rose was at her best to-night. She knew college songs that Rodney and
+Alvah knew, she dimpled and coquetted with the pretty confidence of a
+kitten. She stood up, dainty and sweet in her pink gown, and played her
+violin, with the gaslight shining down into her brown eyes, and her
+lace sleeve slipping back and forth over her white arm as the bow
+whipped to and fro.
+
+Rodney did not leave her side, except for a dance with Martie and one
+with Sally. After a while he and Rose went out to sit on the stairs.
+Alvah grew noisy and familiar, and Martie did not know quite how to
+meet his hilarity, although she tried. She was afraid the echoes of his
+wild laugh would greet her father's ears, if he had come in and was
+upstairs, and that Pa might do something awful.
+
+The evening wore on. Lydia looked tired, and Sally was absolutely mute,
+listening politely to Robert Archer's slow, uninteresting narration of
+the purchase of the Hospital site. Martie felt as if she had been in
+this dreadful gaslight forever; she watched the clock.
+
+At eleven they all went out to the dining room, and here the first real
+evidences of pleasure might be seen on the faces of the guests. Now
+Lydia, too, was in her favourite element, superintending coffee cups,
+while Sally, alert again, cut the layer cakes. The table looked
+charming and the sandwiches and coffee, cream and olives, were swiftly
+put in circulation. Under the heartening rattle of cutlery and china
+every one talked, the air was scented with coffee, the room so warm
+that two windows by general consent were opened to the cool night.
+
+Martie took her share of the duties of hospitality as if in an
+oppressive dream. Rodney sat beside her, and Rose on his other side. To
+an outsider Martie might have seemed her chattering self, but she
+knew--and Sally knew--that the knife was in her heart. She said
+good-night to Rodney brightly, and kissed Rose. Rodney was to take Rose
+home because, as she explained to Martie in an aside, it was almost on
+his way, and it seemed a shame to take Dr. Tate so far.
+
+"I've been scolding Rod terribly; those boys had highballs or something
+before they came here," Rose said, puckering her lips and shaking her
+head as she carefully pinned a scarf over her pretty hair. "So silly!
+That's what we were talking about on the stairs."
+
+She tripped away on Rodney's arm. Alvah, complaining of a splitting
+head, went off alone. Somehow the others filtered away; Angela Baxter,
+who was to spend the night with Lydia, piled the last of the dishes
+with Lydia in the kitchen. Sally, silent and yawning, sank into an
+armchair by the dying fire. Martie, watching the lanterns, and hearing
+the voices die away after the last slamming of the gate, stood on the
+dark porch staring into the night. The trees scarcely showed against a
+heavy sky, a restless wind tossed their uppermost branches; a few drops
+of rain fell on a little gust of air. The night was damp and heavy; it
+pressed upon the village almost like a soft, smothering weight. Martie
+felt as if she could hear the world breathe.
+
+With miserable, dry eyes, she looked up at the enveloping blackness;
+drops of rain on her burning face, a chill shaking her whole body in
+the thin gown. Martie wanted to live no longer; she longed to press
+somehow into that great silent space, to cool her burning head and
+throbbing heart in those immeasurable distances on distances of dark.
+She did not want to go back into the dreadful house, where the chairs
+were pushed about, and the table a wreck of wilted flowers and crumbs,
+where the air was still laden with the odour of coffee and cigarettes.
+She did not want to reclaim her own shamed and helpless little entity
+after this moment of escape.
+
+Her own pain and mortification--ah, she could have borne those. But to
+have Lydia and Sally and Len and all Monroe sorry for her ...
+
+Martie did not sleep that night. She tossed in a restless agony of
+remembering, and the pitiable party seemed a life-failure, as she lay
+thinking of it in the dark, a colossal blunder never to be obliterated.
+They were unlucky--the Monroes. They never could do things like other
+people.
+
+Early in the cold dawn she heard the quiet slop and spatter of rain.
+Thank God there could be no picnic to-day! Exhausted, she slept.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+Whatever Lydia, her mother, and Sally agreed between themselves the
+next day they never told, but there was a conspiracy immediately on
+foot. Little was said of the party, and nothing of Rodney Parker, for
+many days. And if Martie in her fever of hurt pride was not openly
+grateful, at least they knew her benefited by the silence. Rose had no
+such compunction.
+
+On the afternoon of the long rainy Saturday that was to have been
+filled with a picnic, Rose telephoned. She just wanted to see how every
+one was--and say what a lovely time she'd had! Ida Parker had just
+telephoned, and Rose was going up there at about four o'clock to stay
+for dinner, just informally, of course. She would go back to Berkeley
+to-morrow night, but she hoped to see the girls in the meantime.
+
+Silently, heavily, Martie went on wiping the "company" dishes, carrying
+them into the pantry shelves where they had been piled untouched for
+years, and where they would stand again unused for a long, long time.
+Sally was tired, and complained of a headache. Lydia was irritatingly
+cheerful and philosophical. Len had disappeared, as was usual on
+Saturday, and Mrs. Monroe and Mrs. Potts were talking in low tones over
+the sitting-room fire. Outside, the rain fell and fell and fell.
+
+Martie thought of Rose, laughing, pink-cheeked, discarding her neat
+little raincoat with Rodney's help at four o'clock, at the Parkers'
+house, and bringing her fresh laughter into their fire. She thought of
+her at six--at seven--and during the silent two hours when she brooded
+over her cards.
+
+Coming out of church the next morning, Rose rejoiced over the clear
+bath of sunlight that followed the rain. "Rod is going to take me
+driving," she told Martie. "I like him ever so much; don't you, Martie?"
+
+Alice Clark, coming in for a chat with Lydia late that afternoon, added
+the information that when little Rose Ransome left the city at four
+o'clock, Rod Parker and that fat friend of his went, too. Escorting
+Rose--and he and Rose would have tea in the city before he took her to
+Berkeley--Martie thought.
+
+That was the beginning, and now scarcely a day passed without its new
+sting. The girl was not conscious of any instinct for bravery; she did
+not want to be brave, she wanted to draw back from the rack--to escape,
+rather than to endure. A first glimpse of happiness had awakened
+fineness in her nature; she had been generous, sweet, ambitious, only a
+few weeks ago. She had given new thought to her appearance, had carried
+her big frame more erectly. All her bigness, all her capacity for
+loving and giving she would have poured at Rodney's feet; his home, his
+people, his hopes, and plans--these would have been hers.
+
+Repulsed, this gold of youth turned to brass; through long idle days
+and wakeful nights Martie paid the cruel price for a few hours of
+laughter and dreaming. She was not given another moment of hope.
+
+Not that she did not meet Rodney, for in Monroe they must often meet.
+And when they met he greeted her, and they laughed and chatted gaily.
+But she was not Brunhilde now, and if Sally or Lydia or any one else
+was with her she knew he was not sorry.
+
+In the middle of December Rose's mother, the neat little widow who was
+like an older Rose, told Sally that Rose was not going back to college
+after Christmas. Quietly, without comment, Sally told this to Martie
+when they were going to bed that night.
+
+Martie walked to the window, and stood looking out for a long time.
+When she came back to Sally her face was pale, her breast moving
+stormily, and her eyes glittering.
+
+"They're engaged, I suppose?" Martie said.
+
+Sally did not speak. But her eyes answered.
+
+"Sally," said her sister, in a voice thick with pain, as she sat down
+on the bed, "am I to blame? Could I have done differently? Why does
+this come to Rose, who has everything NOW, and pass me by? I--I don't
+want to be like--like Lyd, Sally; I want to live! What can I do? Oh, my
+GOD," said Martie, rising suddenly and beginning to walk to and fro,
+with her magnificent mane of hair rolling and tumbling about her
+shoulders as she moved, "what shall I do? There is a world, out there,
+and people working and living and succeeding in it--and here I am, in
+Monroe--dying, dying, DYING of longing! Sally ..." and with tears wet
+on her cheeks, and her mouth trembling, she came close to her sister.
+"Sally," whispered Martie unsteadily, "I care for--him. I wanted
+nothing better. I thought--I thought that by this time next year we
+might--we might be going to have a baby--Rodney and I."
+
+She flung back her head, and went again to the window. Sally burst into
+bitter crying.
+
+"Oh, Martie--Martie--I know! I know! My darling, splendid, glorious
+sister--so much more clever than any one else, and so much BETTER! I
+think it'll break my heart!"
+
+And in each other's arms, nineteen and twenty-one wept together at the
+bitterness of life.
+
+The days wore by, and Rose came smiling home for Christmas, and early
+in the new year Martie and Sally were asked to a pink luncheon at the
+Ransome cottage, finding at each chair two little tissue-paper
+heart-shaped frames initialled "R. P." and "R. R." with kodak prints of
+Rose and Rodney inside. The Monroe girls gave Rose a "linen shower" in
+return, and the whole town shared the pleasure of the happy pair.
+
+Martie had enough to think of now. Not even the thoughts of the
+prospective bride could dwell more persistently on her own affairs than
+did Martie's thoughts. Rose, welcome at the Parkers', envied and
+admired even by Ida and May and Florence; Rose, prettily buying her
+wedding finery and dashing off apt little notes of thanks for her
+engagement cups and her various "showers"; Rose, fluttering with
+confidences and laughter to the admiring Rodney, with the diamond
+glittering on her hand; these and a thousand other Roses haunted
+Martie. Lydia and her mother admired and marvelled with the rest. Lydia
+it was who first brought home the news that the young Parkers were to
+be married at Easter, Sally learned from Rose's own lips that they were
+to spend a week in Del Monte as honeymoon.
+
+The Monroe girls still wandered down town on weekday mornings,
+loitering into the post-office, idling an hour away in the Library,
+drifting home to mutton stew or Hamburg steak when the clock in the
+town hall struck twelve. Sometimes Martie watched the big eastern
+trains thunder by, looking with her wistful young blue eyes at the
+card-playing men and the flushed, bored young women with their heads
+resting on the backs of their upholstered seats. Sometimes she stopped
+at the little magazine stand outside of Carlson's cigar store; her eye
+caught by a photograph on the cover of a weekly: "Broadway at
+Forty-Second," or "Night Lights from the Singer Building," or the
+water-front silhouette that touches like the sight of a beloved face
+even some hearts that know it not. She wanted to do something, now that
+it was certain that she would not marry. Slowly, and late, Martie's
+soul was awakening.
+
+She asked her father if she might go to work. Certainly she might, her
+father said lifelessly. Well, what should she do?--the girl persisted.
+
+"Ah, that's quite another thing!" Malcolm said, with his favourite air
+of detecting an inconsistency. "You want to work? Well and good, go
+ahead and do it! But don't expect me to tell you what to do. Your
+mother may have some idea. Your grandmother--and she was the loveliest
+woman I ever knew!--was content to be merely a lady, something I wish
+my daughters knew a little more about. Her beautiful home, her children
+and servants, her friends and her church--that was her work! She didn't
+want to push coarsely out into the world. However, if you do, go ahead!
+I confess I am tired of seeing the dark, ugly expression you've worn
+lately, Martie. Go your own way!"
+
+Armed with this ungracious permission, Martie went down to see Miss
+Fanny, talked with Grace, and even, meeting him on a lonely walk,
+climbed into the old phaeton beside Dr. Ben, and asked his advice.
+Nothing definite resulted, yet Martie was the happier for the new
+interest. Old Father Martin talked to her of her plans one day, and
+presently put her in communication with a certain widow, Mrs. O'Brien,
+of San Francisco, who wanted an intelligent young woman to go with her
+to New York to help with the care and education of two little O'Briens.
+
+This possibility fired Martie and Sally to fever-heat, and they hoped
+and prayed eagerly while it was under discussion. New York at last!
+said Martie, who felt that she had been waiting endless years for New
+York. But Mrs. O'Brien, it seemed, wanted some one who would be able to
+begin French and German and music lessons for little Jane and Cora, and
+the question of Martie's fitness was settled.
+
+Still she was happier, and when Easter came, and the Monroe girls were
+bidden to Rose's wedding, it was with a new and charming gravity in
+face and manner that Martie went.
+
+The ceremony took place in the comfortable parlours of the Ransome
+house; the pretty home wedding possible because Rodney was not a
+Catholic. Just like Rose's luck--instead of being married in the bare,
+big church, thought Martie, at whose age the religious side of the
+question did not appear important. Dr. Ben gave his young cousin away,
+and Rose's mother, whose every thought since the fatherless child was
+born had been for the girl's good, who had schemed and worked and
+prayed for twenty years that Rose might be happy, that Rose might have
+music and languages, travel and friends, had her reward when the lovely
+little Mrs. Parker flung her fragrant arms about her, and gave her her
+first kiss.
+
+Rose looked her prettiest, just becomingly pale, becomingly merry,
+becomingly tearful. Her presents, on view upstairs, were far finer than
+any Monroe had seen since Cliff Frost was married. Rodney was the usual
+excited, nervous, laughing groom. The wedding supper was perfection,
+and the young people danced when Father Martin was gone, and when the
+bride and groom had dashed away to the ten-o'clock train.
+
+It was all over. Rose had everything, as usual, and Martie had nothing.
+
+Easter was in early April that year, and the sweet, warm month was
+dying away when one afternoon Miss Fanny, always hopeful for this
+dreaming helpless young creature so full of big faults and big
+possibilities, detained Martie in the Library for a little dissertation
+upon card catalogues. Martie listened with her usual enthusiastic
+interest. Yes--she understood; yes, she understood.
+
+"There's your telephone, Miss Fanny!" said she, in the midst of a
+demonstration. The older woman picked up the instrument.
+
+"It's for you, Martie. It's Sally," she said, surprised. "Sally!"
+Martie did not understand. She had left Sally at the bridge, and Sally
+was to go on to the Town Hall for Pa, with a letter.
+
+"Hello, Martie!" said a buoyant yet tremulous voice. "Martie--this is
+Sally. I'm over at Mrs. Hawkes's. Martie--I'm married!"
+
+"Married!" echoed Martie stupidly, eyeing the listening Miss Fanny
+bewilderedly.
+
+"Yes--to Joe. Lissun--can't you come right over? I'll tell you all
+about it!"
+
+Martie put back the receiver in a state of utter stupefaction.
+Fortunately the Library was empty, and after telling Miss Fanny the
+little she knew, she went out into the sweet, hot street. The town was
+in a tent of rustling new leaves; lilacs were in heavy flower. Roses
+and bridal-wreath and mock-orange trees were in bloom. Rank brown grass
+stood everywhere; the fruit blossoms were gone, tall buttercups were
+nodding over the grass.
+
+At the Hawkes's house there were laughter and excitement. Sally, rosier
+and more talkative than even Martie had ever seen her before, was the
+heroine of the hour. When Martie came in, she flew toward her in an
+ecstasy, and with laughter and tears the tale was told. She and Joe had
+chanced to meet on the Court House steps, Sally coming out from the
+task of delivering a letter from Pa to Judge Parker, Joe going in with
+a telegram for Captain Tate. And almost without words from the
+lilac-scented, green-shaded street they had gone into the License
+Bureau; and almost without words they had walked out to find Father
+Martin. And now they were married! And the thin old ring on Sally's
+young hand had belonged to Father Martin's mother.
+
+Martie was too generous not to respond to her sister's demand, even if
+she had not been completely carried away by the excitement about her.
+
+Mrs. Hawkes, tears of joy in her eyes, yet smiles shining through them,
+was brewing tea for the happy pair. Minnie Hawkes's Rose was making
+toast when she was not jumping up and down half mad with delight. Ellen
+Hawkes, now Mrs. Castle, was setting the table. Grandma Kelly was
+quavering out blessings, and Joe's older brother, Thomas, who worked at
+night, and had been breakfasting at four o'clock, when the young pair
+burst in, rushed out to the bakery to come back triumphantly with a
+white frosted cake.
+
+"It's a fair cake," said Mrs. Hawkes in the babel. "But you wait--I'll
+make you a cake!"
+
+"And you know, Joe and I between us just made up the dollar for the
+license!" laughed Sally.
+
+"Say, listen," said Ellen suddenly, "you folks have got to take our
+house for a few days; how about that, Mother? You and Joe can start
+housekeeping there like Terry and me. How about it, Mother? We'll come
+here!"
+
+"But, Sally--not to tell me!" Martie said reproachfully.
+
+"Oh, darling--I did that deliberately!" her sister answered earnestly.
+"I'm going to telephone Pa, and I know he'll be wild. And I DIDN'T want
+you to be in it! You'll have enough--poor Martie!"
+
+Already the shadow of the old house was passing from her. With what
+gaiety she went about the old room, thought Martie, stopped by Mrs.
+Hawkes's affectionate arms for a kiss, stopping to kiss Grandma Kelly
+of her own free will. Sally had no sense of social values; she loved to
+be here, admired, loved, busy.
+
+"Think of the priest giving her his mother's own ring!" said the women
+over and over. "It'll bring you big luck, Sally!"
+
+They all sat down at the table, and Terry and John Healey came in to
+rejoice, and the Healey baby awoke, and Grace came in from work. When
+Martie left there was talk of supper; everybody was to stay for supper.
+
+Walking home in the late spring twilight, Martie felt a certain
+satisfaction. Sally was happy, and they would be good to her, and she
+would be better off than Lydia, anyway. Joe as a husband was perfectly
+absurd, of course, but Joe certainly did love Sally. Monroe would buzz,
+but Martie had heard Monroe buzzing for a long time now, and after the
+first shock, had found herself unhurt. Curiously, Sally's plunge into a
+new life seemed to free her own hands.
+
+"Now I am going to get out!" said Martie, opening her own gate.
+
+When Malcolm Monroe came home that night it was to a well-sustained
+hurricane of tears and protest. Mrs. Monroe and Lydia shed genuine
+tears, and Martie and Len added diplomatically to the hubbub. Pa must
+suspect no one of sympathy for the shameless Sally.
+
+"To think, Pa, after all we've done for her!" sobbed Mrs. Monroe, and
+Lydia, wiping her nose and shaking her head, kept saying with
+reproachful firmness: "I can't believe it of Sally! Why shouldn't she
+tell one of us. To stand up and be married all alone!"
+
+Her father took the news exactly as might have been expected. While
+there was hope of convicting Martie or Lydia of complicity, he
+questioned them sharply and sternly. When this was gone, he swiftly
+worked himself into such a passion as his children had rarely seen
+before. Sally and Joe were solemnly denounced, disinherited, and
+abandoned. And any child of his who spoke to either should share their
+fate.
+
+"Oh, Papa--don't!" quavered Lydia, as her father strode to the Bible,
+and with horrible precision inked from the register the record of
+Sally's birth. Mrs. Monroe looked terrified, and even Leonard was pale.
+But Martie, to her own amazement, found a sudden calm scorn in her
+heart. What a silly thing to do, just because poor little Sally married
+the boy she loved. How dared Pa call himself a Christian while he
+regarded Sally's downward step from a mere social level a disgrace! And
+how cruel he was, playing upon poor Ma's and Lydia's feelings just for
+his own satisfaction.
+
+"You understand me, don't you, Martie?" he asked grimly.
+
+"I suppose so." An ugly smile curved Martie's lips. Her lids were half
+lowered.
+
+"Well--remember it. And never any one of you mention your sister's name
+to me again!"
+
+"No, Pa," said four fervent voices. Then they had dinner.
+
+The next day the three women packed up Sally's things; Lydia and her
+mother in tears, but Martie strangely content. Something had happened
+at all events. She put Sally's baby sash and collar and other treasured
+rubbish in the package, with two scribbled lines pinned to them:
+"Praying for you, darling. Pa is furious. The slipper is for luck. Your
+M."
+
+And then the eventless days began to wheel by again. Rose came home,
+and came to see Martie, and Martie dined at the Parkers'. Rodney,
+though obviously blind to all women but his wife, was cordial and
+gallant to the guest and Rose took her up to her pretty, frilly
+bedroom, so that Martie might take off her hat and coat, and told
+Martie that Rod was the neatest man she had ever seen, such a fusser
+about his bath and his clothes. On Rose's bureau was a big photograph
+of Rodney in a silver frame, and on Rodney's high dresser a charming
+photograph of Rose in her wedding gown. When she was putting on her hat
+four hours later to be driven home by Rodney, Martie heard Rose's
+wifely voice in the hall: "You are a darling to do this, Rod!" The tone
+was that in which a man is praised by his women for a hard duty
+cheerfully done. Martie was not surprised when Rose merrily confided to
+her that Rod wanted his wife to go along--the silly!--and accompanied
+them on the short drive.
+
+She did not see much of the young Parkers after that, nor did she
+expect to be counted among their intimate friends. She began to drift
+into the public kindergarten in the mornings, to help Miss Malloy with
+the unruly babies. And she missed Sally more every day.
+
+Sally and Joe had gone to Pittsville immediately after their wedding;
+Joe having received a dazzling offer of forty dollars a month for two
+summer months from the express company there.
+
+But when Sally had been married six weeks, Martie heard her voice one
+day when the younger sister was passing the Hawkes's house. Instantly
+she entered the gate, her heart beating high. Sally's dear,
+unforgettable voice! And Sally's slender shoulders and soft, loose hair!
+
+The girls were in each other's arms, laughing and crying as they clung
+together. Martie thought she had never seen her sister look so well, or
+seem so sweet and gay. There were a thousand questions on each side to
+ask; Martie poured out the home news. Sally and Joe were housekeeping
+in three rooms, and it was more FUN! And Sally really cooked him
+wonderful dinners; his father and mother had come over to one, and
+wasn't it good? Mrs. Hawkes enthusiastically agreed.
+
+Of course, they had hardly ANYTHING, bubbled Sally, only two saucepans
+and one frying pan and the coffee pot. But it was more FUN! And in the
+evenings they walked around Pittsville, and went to the ten-cent
+theatre, or bought candy and divided it. COULDN'T Martie come some time
+to dinner?
+
+"Pa," said Martie simply. Sally's bright face clouded. She sent a kiss
+to Ma and darling Lyd. She and Joe would come back to Monroe in
+September, and then she would come see Pa and make him forgive her.
+Tell him she still loved him!
+
+Martie delivered none of these airy messages. She secretly marvelled at
+the happiness that could blind Sally to a memory of Pa, and Pa's
+stubbornness.
+
+"Listen, Martie," said Sally, when for a moment the sisters were alone,
+"it wasn't so sudden as you think, my marrying Joe!" She stopped,
+interrupted by some thought, and added impulsively, "Isn't it STRANGE,
+Mart, that we might have missed each other; it makes us both just
+SHIVER to think of it! Well"--and with a visible effort the little wife
+brought herself down from a roseate cloud to realities again--"if--if
+Lyd had married Cliff Frost," she said uncertainly, "I never should
+have DARED marry Joe!"
+
+"Or if I had married Rodney Parker, Sally?" Martie added steadily.
+
+"Well--" The colour flew to Sally's face. "As it was," she went on a
+little hurriedly, "I just--couldn't bear to go on and on, it made me
+desperate! And I thought Pa and Ma's way is no good, our house never
+seems to have much happiness in it--and I'm going to get OUT! There
+never was a place like this for good times, and babies, and jokes, and
+company to dinner!" smiled Sally, looking about the Hawkeses' parlour
+triumphantly.
+
+But then Sally was born devoid of a social sense, mused Martie, walking
+home. What would life be without it--she wondered. No affectations, no
+barriers, no pretenses--
+
+"Flout me not, Sweet!" said some one at her side. She looked up into
+the beaming eyes of Wallace Bannister. "Don't you remember me--I'm the
+city feller that came here breakin' all hearts awhile back!"
+
+"You idiot!" Martie laughed, too. "I thought you were miles away!"
+
+"Well, judging by your expression, darling, you were miles away, too,"
+said the irrepressible Wallace. "How are you, Brunhilde? Ich liebe
+dich! Yes'm, we ought to be miles away, but to tell you the honest
+truth, the season is simply ROTTEN here on the coast. We've bust up,
+for the moment, but dry those tears. Here's my contract for seven weeks
+in San Francisco--seven plays. Sixty bones per week; pretty neat, what?
+We begin rehearsing in July, open August eighth, and if it's a go, go
+on indefinitely. The Cluetts and I are in this--the rest of the
+company's gone flooey. Meanwhile, I have three weeks to wait, and I'm
+staying with my aunt in Pittsville studying like mad."
+
+"And what are you doing in Monroe?" Martie said contentedly, as they
+wandered along.
+
+"I came here a week ago to change some shoes," said Wallace, "and I saw
+you. So to-day I came and made you a formal call."
+
+"You did NOT!" Martie ejaculated, laughing.
+
+"Why didn't I? I fell down eleven steps into your garden, knocked on
+the front door, knocked on the side door, talked to some one called
+'Ma,' talked to some one called 'Lydia,' and learned that Miss Martha
+Brunhilde Monroe was out for a sashay. There!"
+
+"Well--for goodness sake!" Martie was conscious of flushing. From that
+second she grew a little self-conscious. He was a funny creature. He
+would have been unusually handsome, she thought, if it were not for a
+certain largeness--it was not quite coarseness--of feature. He would
+have been extraordinarily charming, decided Martie, but for that same
+quality in his manner; recklessness, carelessness. She knew he was not
+always telling the truth; these honours, these affairs, these
+fascinating escapades were not all his own. His exaggerated expressions
+of affection for herself were only a part of this ebullient sense of
+romance. But he was amusing.
+
+"Bon soir, papillon!" he said at her gate. "How about a meet to-morrow?
+Tie a pink scarf to thy casement if thy jailer sleeps. Seriously, leave
+us meet, kid. Leave us go inter Bonestell's with the crowd--watto? I'll
+wait for youse outside the Library at three."
+
+"With the accent on the WAIT," said Martie significantly. But she did
+not think of Rodney that evening. She thought of Sally and of Wallace
+Bannister.
+
+Fortunately for her, it did not occur to her father to cross-examine
+her on any other event of the day except the circumstance that she had
+been seen walking with an unknown young man. This was food for much
+advice.
+
+"I don't like it, my daughter," said Malcolm, rubbing his shins
+together and polishing his glasses as he sat by the fire. "I don't like
+it at all. I don't like this tendency to permit familiarities with this
+young man and that young man--all very well for a while, but not the
+sort of thing a young man chooses in a WIFE."
+
+Martie, looking at him respectfully, as she placed a red Queen on a
+black King, felt in her heart that she would like to kill him.
+
+The next afternoon she decided to clean the chicken house, one of the
+tasks in which her strange nature delighted. To splash about with hose
+and broom, tip over the littered drinking trough, wash cobwebs from the
+windows with a well-directed stream of water; in these things Martie
+found some inexplicable satisfaction. She went upstairs after luncheon
+to get into old clothes, came down half an hour later with her best hat
+on, walked straight out of the gate and down town.
+
+Wallace was waiting, elated at her punctuality. Martie explaining her
+fear that some one might report their meeting to her father, they
+waited openly at Masset's corner, boarded the half-past three o'clock
+trolley, and went to Pittsville.
+
+Pittsville was two miles away, but this adventure had all the charm of
+foreign travel to Martie. Every house interested her, the main street
+of the little town might have been Broadway in New York. The people
+looked different, she said. She and Wallace laughed their way through
+the Five-and-Ten-Cent Store, enjoyed a Floradora Special composed of
+bananas, ice cream, nuts, whipped cream, maple syrup, and cherries, and
+finally bought six cream puffs and carried them to Sally.
+
+Sally's delight was almost tearful. She led Martie rapturously over her
+domain: the little bedroom spotless and sunshiny in the summer
+afternoon; the microscopic kitchen scented with the baked apples that
+HAD burned a little and the cookies that would NOT brown; the
+living-and-dining room that was at once so bare and so rich. It was a
+home, Martie realized dimly, and Sally was a person at last. The
+younger sister peeped interestedly into spice-tins and meat safe; three
+eggs were in a small yellow bowl, two thin slices of bacon on a plate.
+In the bread box was half a loaf of bread and one cut slice.
+
+"Sally, it must be fun!" said Martie. "All this doll's house for six
+dollars a month!"
+
+"Oh--fun!" Sally was rapturous beyond words. She gave them pale, hot
+cookies; the cream puffs would delight Joe.
+
+The three laughed and feasted happily; Martie with a new sense of
+freedom and independence that exhilarated her like wine.
+
+"Find us a nice little place like this, sister," said Wallace. "Martie
+loves me, Sarah. Their lips met in one long, rapturous kiss. The end."
+
+The girls laughed joyously. Martie went home at five, Wallace
+accompanying her. She told her father that night that she had been in
+the Library.
+
+The next day she did clean the chicken house, and did go down to spend
+the afternoon with Miss Fanny. But freedom danced in her veins; on the
+third afternoon she and Wallace took a long walk, and stopped to see
+Dr. Ben, and, sitting on two barrels behind the old railway station,
+ate countless cherries and apricots. Again--and again--they went to
+Pittsville. Sally was in their confidence and feasted them in the
+little flat or went with them on their innocent expeditions.
+
+From their third meeting, it was cheerfully taken for granted that
+Wallace and Martie belonged to each other. Martie never knew what he
+really felt, any more than he dreamed of the girlish amusement and
+distrust in which she held him. They flirted only, but they swiftly
+found life uninteresting when apart. They never talked of marriage, yet
+every time they parted it was reluctantly, and never without definite
+plans for another immediate meeting. Wallace began to advise Martie not
+to eat the rich things that made her sick; Martie counselled him about
+his new suit, and listened, uneasy and ashamed, to a brief, penitential
+reference to "crazy" things he had done, as a "kid." He promised her
+never to drink again and incidentally told her that his real name was
+Edward Tenney. Suddenly they found the plural pronoun: we must do that;
+that doesn't interest us; Pa must not suspect our affair.
+
+"The Cluetts are going to be in Pittsville," said Wallace one day. "I
+want you to meet them. You'll like Mabel; she's got two little kids.
+She and Jesse have been married only six years. And they'll like you,
+too; I've told 'em you're my girl!"
+
+"Am I?" said Martie huskily. They were alone in Sally's little house,
+and for answer he put his arms about her. "Do you love me, Wallace?"
+she asked.
+
+The question, the raised blue eyes, fired him to sudden passion. They
+kissed each other blindly, with shut eyes. After that, whenever they
+might, they kissed, and sometimes Martie, ignorant and innocent,
+wondered why the memory of his hot lips worried her a little.
+
+There was nothing wrong in kissing! Martie still said to herself that
+of course they would not marry; yet when she was with Wallace she loved
+the evidences of her power over him, and seemed unable, as he was
+unable, to keep from the constant question: "Do you love me?"
+
+In late June the Cluetts--pretty faded Mabel, her two enormous babies,
+her stepson Lloyd, and Jesse, the husband and father--all came to
+Pittsville for a few days' leisure before rehearsals began. Lloyd was a
+"light juvenile," off as well as on the stage. Jesse played father,
+judge, guardian, prime minister, and old family doctor in turn. Mabel,
+rouged and befrilled, still made an attractive foil for Wallace as the
+hero. Martie liked them all; their chatter of the fairyland of the
+stage, their trunks plastered with labels, their fine voices, their
+general air of being incompetent children adrift in a puzzling world.
+Deep laughter stirred within her when they spoke of business or of
+finance.
+
+They talked frankly, in their three cheap rooms at the "Pittsville
+White House," before Wallace's girl. Jesse was pompous; Lloyd boyishly
+fretful; Mabel, patient, sympathetic, discouraged, and sanguine by
+turns. Martie was enraptured by the babies: Bernadette, a crimped heavy
+little brunette of five, and Leroy delicious at three months in limp
+little flannel wrappers.
+
+"I'll tell you what, Miss Monroe--I'm going to call you Martha--" said
+Mabel, "I'm just about sick of California. I'm not a Californian;
+little old New York for mine. I first seen the light of day at the
+corner of Sixth Avenue and Sixteenth Street, and I wish to the good
+Lord I was there now. You'll never get a fair deal in Frisker, if any
+one should ride up on a bike and ask you, dear. We were doing very good
+last fall when little Mister Man here decided to join the party--after
+that I was simply no good! The box receipts have fell off steadily
+since we put that awful girl in. Don't leave that heavy child paralyze
+your limbs--she'll set there forever like an immidge, if you go on
+telling her stories!"
+
+"I am amused--genuinely amused at the circumstances under which you
+find us, Miss Monroe," said Jesse Cluett with a dignified laugh. "And
+my friends in the East would be equally surprised. Professional pride
+brought me West, the pride of a man whose public demands one or two
+favoured parts from him, year after year. My three or four successes
+were a great gratification to me; not only the public, but my fellow
+actors at the Lambs, assured me that my future was MADE. 'Made?--no,' I
+said. 'No. I have no wish to become a one-part man.' To John Drew I
+said--I met him going into the Club-'H'ar you, Jesse?' he said. ... Oh,
+yes; we are warm friends, old friends. I played for two years with John
+Drew. Very brilliant actor--in some ways. And that is only one instance
+of the enthusiastic appreciation to which I am accustomed. ... Are we
+going to eat, my dear?" For Mrs. Cluett, who in her hospitable
+enthusiasm over Martie had taken a little spirit lamp from the
+washstand and placed a full kettle over the flame, was now looking
+about her in a vague, distressed sort of way.
+
+"It's going out," said she blankly. Philosophically, Jesse put his
+wide-brimmed hat over his loose curls and, straightening his shoulders,
+walked mincingly out for alcohol with the younger men. Mrs. Cluett
+spread a small, spotted fringed cloth on a trunk, setting on it a cut
+and odorous lemon a trifle past its prime and a sticky jar of jam.
+Martie continued to cuddle Leroy and tell Bernadette a fairy tale. She
+found the crowded, tawdry bedroom delightfully cosy, especially when
+the men came back with graham crackers and cheese and spongy, greasy
+bakery doughnuts.
+
+They all laughed when Wallace asked for the rat-trap's delight; and
+when Lloyd dropped a cruller on the floor and thumped his heel to show
+its weight; and when Wallace said: "Don't jam or jar Miss Monroe,
+Jesse!" But when, in retort for this latest witticism, Martie said:
+"Put your hand where it hurts, Wallace, and show Mama"; the laughter
+changed to actual shrieks of mirth; Jesse indulging in a deep
+"ha-ha-ha!" and Mabel hammering her heels madly together and sobbing
+put faintly that she should die--she should simply DIE!
+
+Martie almost missed the five o'clock trolley, but Wallace pushed her
+upon the moving platform at the last possible moment, and she laughed
+and gasped blindly half the way home, accepting his help with her
+disordered hair and hat. When she finally raised her face, and somewhat
+shamefacedly eyed the one or two other occupants of the car, she saw
+Rose sitting opposite, a neat and interested Rose in her trousseau
+tailor-made.
+
+Uncomfortable, Martie bowed, and Rose responded sweetly, presently
+patting the seat beside her with an inviting glove. Somewhat surprised
+at this unexpected graciousness, Martie and her escort crossed the car.
+
+"No, MRS.--not Miss!" Rose contradicted Wallace merrily, looking up at
+him prettily. "I know I'm not very imposing, but I'm a really truly old
+married lady!"
+
+"This is Mrs. Rodney Parker, Wallace," Martie said. Instantly she was
+pleasantly conscious that her easy use of this actor's name was a
+surprise to Rose, and for the first time a definite pride in possession
+seized her. He might not be perfection, but he was hers.
+
+"Is that so!" Wallace exclaimed, with new interest in eyes and voice.
+"Gosh--what fun we had that night! Do you remember the night we had
+oysters, and sat in that little place gassing for two hours? You know,"
+said he, in a confidential aside to Rose, "Martie's a wonder when she
+gets started!"
+
+"Isn't she?" Rose responded politely. "That was before I met my
+husband, I think," she added, "or rather re-met him, for years ago Mr.
+Parker and I----"
+
+But Wallace, amused by the discussion that had arisen between the
+conductor and a Chinese who was getting on the car, interrupted
+abruptly to call Martie's attention to the affair, and Rose's
+reminiscence was lost. She said, with her good-byes, that Mr. Bannister
+must come and dine with them.
+
+"Gosh, I see myself!" ejaculated Wallace ungratefully, as he walked
+with Martie to the gate. "I never could stand that ass Parker!"
+
+"Don't you think she's very pretty, Wallace?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know! I don't care much for those dolly women. I like red
+hair and big women, myself. Listen, Martie. To-morrow----"
+
+No more was said of Rose. Martie wondered why she liked to hear Rodney
+Parker called an ass.
+
+Malcolm Monroe came home for luncheon every day except Wednesday, which
+made Wednesday for the women of the family the easy day of the week.
+Their midday meal, never elaborate or formal, was less formal and even
+simpler on this day; conversation was more free, and time less
+considered.
+
+For several days after Sally's extraordinary marriage Mrs. Monroe had
+wept continually, and even her always mild and infrequent attempts at
+conversation had been silenced. Later, she and Lydia had long and
+mournful discussions of the event, punctuating them with heavy sighs
+and uncomprehending shaking of their heads. That a Monroe in her senses
+could stoop to a Hawkes was a fact that would never cease to puzzle and
+amaze, and what the town was saying and thinking in the matter was an
+agonized speculation to Mrs. Monroe and Lydia. "Socially, of course,"
+said Lydia, "we will never hold up our heads again!"
+
+But as the days went by and the divorce of the young Mulkeys, and the
+new baby at Mrs. Hughie Wilson's, and the Annual Strawberry Festival
+and Bazaar for the Church Debt came along to make the gossip about
+Sally and Joe of secondary interest, Sally's mother and sister revived.
+They came to take a bitter-sweet satisfaction in the sympathy and
+interest that were shown on all sides.
+
+Martie was not often at home in these days. "She fairly lives at the
+Library, and she takes long walks, I imagine, Ma," Lydia said once.
+"You know Martie misses--she's lonely. And then--there was, of course,
+the feeling about Rodney. It's just Martie's queer way of righting
+herself."
+
+But on the hot Wednesday morning that brought in July Martie, with a
+clear conscience, was baking gingerbread. She had improved in manner
+and habit, of late, displaying an unwonted interest in the care of
+herself and her person, and an unwonted energy in discharging domestic
+duties.
+
+She was buttering pans vigorously, and singing "The Two Grenadiers,"
+when Lydia came into the kitchen.
+
+"Martie, Pa just came in the gate. Isn't that maddening! We'll have to
+give him something canned; he hates eggs. Can't you make some drop
+cakes of that batter so they'll be done?"
+
+"Sure I can!" Martie snatched a piece of paper to butter. "But what
+brings him home?"
+
+"Why, I haven't the faintest----" Lydia was beginning, when her
+father's voice came in a shout from the dining room:
+
+"Martie--Martie--MARTIE!"
+
+Terror seized Martie, her mouth watered saltly, her knees touched, and
+a chill shook her. The hot day turned bleak. She and Lydia exchanged a
+sick look before Martie, trembling, crossed the pantry, littered by
+Lydia's silver polish and rags, and went in to face the furious old man
+on the hearthrug. Malcolm was quivering so violently that his own fear
+seemed to be that he would lose his voice before he had gained his
+information. Martie was vaguely conscious that her mother, frightened
+and pale, was in the room, and that Len had come to the hall doorway.
+
+"Martie," said her father, breathing hard, "where were you yesterday
+afternoon?"
+
+"At Alice Clark's Five Hundred with Lyd----" the girl was beginning
+innocently. He cut her short with an impatient shake of the head.
+
+"I don't mean yesterday! Where were you on Monday?"
+
+"Monday? Why, Mama and I walked down to Bonestell's."
+
+"Yes, we did, Pa! Yes, we did!" quavered Mrs. Monroe. "Oh, Pa, WHAT IS
+IT?"
+
+"And then what did you do?" he pursued blackly, turning to his wife.
+
+"Why--why, Martie said she was going to go over to Pittsville and back,
+just for the ride--just to stay on the trolley, Pa!" explained his wife.
+
+"Martie," thundered her father, "when you went to Pittsville you saw
+your sister, didn't you?"
+
+Martie's head was held erect. She was badly frightened, but conscious
+through all her fear that there was a certain satisfaction in having
+the blow fall at last.
+
+"Yes, sir," she gulped; she wet her lips. "Yes, sir," she said again.
+
+"You admit it?" said Malcolm, his eyes narrowing.
+
+Lydia, pale and terrified, had come in from the kitchen. Now she
+suddenly spoke.
+
+"Oh, Pa, don't--don't blame Martie for that! You know what the girls
+always were to each other--I don't mean to be impertinent, Pa--do
+forgive me!--but Martie and Sally always----"
+
+"One moment, Lydia," said her father, with a repressive gesture, the
+veins blue on his forehead. "JUST--ONE--MOMENT." And, panting, he
+turned again to Martie. "Yes, and who else did you see in Pittsville?"
+he whispered, his voice failing.
+
+Martie, breathing fast, her bright eyes fixed upon him with a sort of
+fascination, did not answer.
+
+"I'll tell you who you saw," said Malcolm at white heat. "I'll tell
+you! You met this young whippersnapper Jackanapes--what's his
+name--this young one-night actor----"
+
+"Do you mean Mr. Wallace Bannister?" Martis asked with a sort of
+frightened scorn.
+
+Lydia and her mother gasped audibly in the silence. Malcolm moved his
+eyes slowly from his youngest daughter's face to his wife's, to
+Lydia's, and back to Martie again. For two dreadful moments he studied
+her, an ugly smile touching his harsh mouth.
+
+"You don't deny it," he said, after the interval, in a shaking voice.
+"You don't deny that you've been disobeying me and lying to me for
+weeks? Now I tell you, my girl--there's been enough of this sort of
+thing going on in this family. You couldn't get the man you wanted, so,
+like your sister, you pick up----"
+
+Martie laughed briefly and bitterly. The sound seemed to madden him.
+For a moment he watched her, his head dropped forward like a menacing
+animal.
+
+"Understand me, Martie," he said. "I'll break that spirit in you--if it
+takes the rest of my life! You'll laugh in a different way! My God--am
+I to be the laughing-stock of this entire town? Is a girl your age
+to----"
+
+"Pa!" sobbed Mrs. Monroe. "Do what you think best, but don't--DON'T
+excite yourself so!"
+
+Her clutching fingers on his arm seemed to soothe in through all his
+fury. He fell silent, still panting, and eying Martie belligerently.
+
+"You--go to your room!" he commanded, pointing a shaking finger at her.
+"Go upstairs with your sister, Lydia, and bring me the key of her door.
+When I decide upon the measure that will bring this young lady quickest
+to her senses, I'll let her know. Meanwhile----"
+
+"Oh, Pa, you needn't lock Martie in," quivered Lydia, "she'll
+stay--won't you, Martie?"
+
+Martie, like a young animal at bay, stood facing them all for a
+breathless moment. In that time the child that had been in her, through
+all these years of slow development, died. Anger went out of her eyes,
+and an infinite sadness filled them. A quick tremble of her lips and a
+flutter at her nostrils were the only signs she gave of the tears she
+felt rising. She flung one arm about her mother and kissed the wet,
+faded cheek.
+
+"Good-bye, Ma," she said quickly. In another instant she had crossed to
+the entrance hall, blindly snatched an old soft felt hat from the rack,
+caught up Len's overcoat, and slipped into it, and was gone. Born in
+that moment of unreasoning terror, her free soul went with her.
+
+The streets were flooded with hot summer sunshine, the sky almost
+white. Not a breeze stirred the thick foliage of the elm trees on Main
+Street as Martie walked quickly down to the Bank.
+
+It was Rodney Parker who gave her her money; the original seventeen
+dollars and fifty cents had swelled to almost twenty-two dollars now.
+Martie hardly saw the gallant youth who congratulated her upon her
+becoming gipsy hat; mechanically she slipped her money into a pocket,
+mechanically started for the road to Pittsville.
+
+Five minutes later she boarded the half-past twelve o'clock trolley,
+coming in excited and exultant upon Sally who was singing quietly over
+a solitary luncheon. The girls laughed and cried together.
+
+"The funny thing is, I am as free as air!" Martie exclaimed, her cheeks
+glowing from the tea and the sympathy and the warm room. "But I never
+knew it! If Pa had gotten on that trolley, I think I would have fainted
+with shock. But what could he do? I am absolutely FREE, Sally--with
+twenty-one dollars and eighty-one cents!"
+
+"I wish you had a husband----" mused Sally.
+
+"I'd rather have a job," Martie said with a quick, bright flush
+nevertheless. "But I think I know how to get one. Mrs. Cluett is going
+to be playing steadily now, and after this engagement they're going to
+try very hard to get booked in New York. She's got to have SOME ONE to
+look out for the children."
+
+"But Martie----" Sally said timidly, "you'd only be a sort of
+servant----"
+
+"Well, that's the only thing I know anything about," Martie answered
+simply. "It might lead to something----"
+
+"Then you and Wallace aren't----?" Sally faltered. "There's nothing
+serious----?"
+
+Martie could not control the colour that swept up to the white parting
+of her hair, but her mouth showed new firmness as she answered gravely:
+
+"Sally--I don't know. Of course, I like him--how could I help it? We're
+awfully good chums; he's the best chum I ever had. But he never--well,
+he never asked me. Sally"--Martie rested her elbows on the table, and
+her chin on her hands--"Sally, would you marry him?"
+
+"If I loved him I would," said Sally.
+
+"Yes, but did you KNOW you loved Joe?" Martie asked. Sally was silent.
+
+"Well--not so much--before--as after we were married," she said
+hesitatingly, after a pause.
+
+Martie suddenly sprang up.
+
+"Well, I'm going to see Mrs. Cluett!"
+
+"I'll go, too," said Sally, "and we'll stop at the express office and
+tell Joe!"
+
+Mrs. Cluett was alone with her children when the callers went in, and
+even Martie's sensitive heart could have asked no warmer reception of
+her plan.
+
+The little actress kissed Sally, and kissed Martie more than once,
+brimming over with interest and sympathy.
+
+"Dearie, it ain't much of a start for you, but it is a start!" said
+Mabel warmly over the head of the nursing baby. "And you'll get your
+living and your railroad fares out of it, anyway! It'll be an ackshal
+godsend to Mr. Cluett and me, for the children have took to you
+something very unusual. We'll have elegant times going around together,
+and you'll never be sorry."
+
+These cheering sentiments Jesse echoed when he came in with Lloyd a few
+minutes later.
+
+"Much depends upon our future contracts, Miss Monroe," said he, "but I
+will go so far as to say this. Should you some time desire to try the
+calling that Shakespeare honoured, the opportunity will not be lacking!"
+
+This threw Sally, Martie, and Mabel into transports. It now being after
+three o'clock tea was proposed.
+
+And now Martie busied herself happily as one belonging to the little
+establishment. Sally had taken rapturous possession of Leroy. Mabel
+lighted the alcohol lamp. Martie, delayed by the affectionate
+Bernadette, shook out the spotted cloth, and cut the stale cake.
+
+They were all absorbed and chattering when Wallace Bannister opened the
+door. At sight of him Martie straightened up, the long knife in one
+hand, Bernadette's sticky little fingers clinging to the other. The
+news was flung at him excitedly. Martie had left home--she was never
+going back--she had only twenty dollars and an old coat and hat--she
+was going to stay with Mabel for the present----
+
+"What's this sweet dream about staying with Mabel?" Wallace said,
+bewildered, reproachful, definite. He came over to Martie and put one
+arm about her. "Look here, folks," he said, almost indignantly,
+"Martie's my girl, aren't you, Martie? We're going to be married right
+now, this afternoon; and hereafter what I do, she does--and where I go,
+she goes!"
+
+The love in his eyes, the love in all their watching faces, Martie
+never forgot. Like a great river of warmth and sunshine it lifted her
+free of her dry, thirsty girlhood; she felt the tears of joy pressing
+against her eyes. There was nothing critical, nothing calculating,
+nothing repressing here; her lover wanted her, just as she stood,
+penniless, homeless, without a dress except the blue gingham she wore!
+
+The glory of it lighted with magic that day and the days to come. They
+laughed over the pretty gipsy hat, over Len's coat, over the need of
+borrowing Mabel's brush and comb. With Joe and Sally, they all dined
+together, and wandered about the village streets in the summer
+moonlight; then Martie went to bed, too happy and excited to sleep, in
+Bernadette's room, wearing a much-trimmed nightgown of Mabel's. It had
+been decided that the marriage should take place in San Francisco,
+Wallace sensibly suggesting that there would be less embarrassing
+questioning there, and also that Martie's money might be spent to
+better advantage in the city.
+
+Martie's trunk came to Sally's house the next morning, unaccompanied by
+message or note, and three days later Martie wrote her mother a long
+letter from a theatrical boarding-house in Geary Street, sending a copy
+of the marriage certificate of Martha Salisbury Monroe to Edward
+Vincent Tenney in Saint Patrick's Church, San Francisco, and observing
+with a touch of pride that "my husband" was now rehearsing for an
+engagement of seven weeks at sixty dollars a week. There was no answer.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK II
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+For days it was her one triumphant thought. She was married! She was
+splendidly and unexpectedly a wife. And her life partner was no mere
+Monroe youth, and her home was not merely one of the old, familiar
+Monroe cottages. She was the wife of a rising actor, and she lived in
+the biggest city of the State!
+
+Martie exulted innocently and in secret. She reviewed the simple fact
+again and again. The two Monroe girls were married. A dimple would
+deepen in her cheek, a slow smile tug at her lips, when she thought of
+it. She told Wallace, in her simple childish way, that she had never
+really expected to be married; she thought that she would like to go
+back to Monroe for a visit, and let her old friends see the plain gold
+ring on her big, white hand.
+
+Everything in Martie's life, up to this point, had helped her to
+believe that marriage was the final step in any woman's experience. A
+girl was admired, was desired, and was married, if she was, humanly
+speaking, a success. If she was not admired, if no one asked her in
+marriage, she was a failure. This was the only test.
+
+Martie's thoughts never went on to the years that followed marriage,
+the experiences and lessons; these were all lost in the golden glow
+that surrounded the step safely accomplished. That the years between
+thirty and fifty are as long as the years between ten and thirty, never
+occurred to her. With the long, dull drag of her mother's life before
+her eyes, she never had thought that Rose's life, that Sally's life, as
+married women, could ever be long and dull. They were married--doubt
+and surmise and hope were over. Lydia and Miss Fanny were not married.
+Therefore, Rose and Sally and Martie had an obvious advantage over
+Lydia and Fanny.
+
+It was a surprise to her to find life placidly proceeding here in this
+strange apartment in Geary Street, as if all the world had not stopped
+moving and commenced again. The persons she met called her "Mrs.
+Bannister" with no visible thrill. Nobody seemed surprised when she and
+the big actor quietly went into their room at night and shut the door.
+
+She had fancied that the mere excitement of the new life filled all
+brides with a sort of proud complacency; that they felt superior to
+other human beings, and secretly scorned the unwed. It was astonishing
+to find herself still concerned with the tiny questions of yesterday:
+the ruffle torn on the bureau, the little infection that swelled and
+inflamed her chin, the quarter of a dollar her Chinese laundryman swore
+he had never received. It was always tremendously thrilling to have
+Wallace give her money: delightful gold pieces such as even her mother
+seldom handled. She felt a naive resentment that so many of them had to
+be spent for what she called "uninteresting" things: lodging and food
+and car fares. They seemed so more than sufficient, when she first
+touched them; they melted so mysteriously away. She felt that there
+should be great saving on so generous an allowance, but Wallace never
+saved, nor did any of his friends and associates.
+
+So that a sense of being baffled began to puzzle her. She was married
+now; the great question of life had been answered in the affirmative.
+But--but the future was vague and unsettled still. Even married persons
+had their problems. Even the best of husbands sometimes left a tiny
+something to be desired.
+
+Husbands, in Martie's dreams, were ideal persons who laughed
+indulgently at adored wives, produced money without question or stint,
+and for twenty or fifty years, as the span of their lives might decree,
+came home appreciatively to delicious dinners, escorted their wives
+proudly to dinner or theatre, made presents, paid compliments, and
+disposed of bills. That her mother had once perhaps had some such idea
+of her father did not occur to her.
+
+"Lissen, dear, did I wake you up?" said Mrs. Wallace Bannister, coming
+quietly into the sitting room that connected her bedroom with that of
+Mrs. Jesse Cluett, in the early hours of an August morning.
+
+"No--o! This feller wakes me up," Mrs. Cluett said, yawning and pale,
+but cheerful. She indicated the fat, serious baby in her arms. "Honest,
+it's enough to kill a girl, playing every night and Sunday, and trying
+to raise children!" she added, manipulating her flat breast with ringed
+fingers to meet the little mouth.
+
+"I wish I could either have the baby nights, or play your parts!"
+laughed Martie, reaching lazily for manicure scissors and beginning to
+clip her nails, as she sat in a loose, blue kimono opposite the older
+woman.
+
+"Dearie, you'll have your own soon enough!" Mabel answered gratefully.
+"It won't be so hard long. They get so's they can take care of
+themselves very quick. Look at Dette--goodness knows where she's been
+ever since she got up. She must of drunk her milk and eaten her
+san'wich, because here's the empty glass. She's playing somewhere;
+she's all right."
+
+"Oh, sure--she's all right!" Martie said, smiling lazily. And as Leroy
+finished his meal she put out her arms. "Come to Aunt Martie, Baby. Oh,
+you--cunnin'--little--scrap, you!"
+
+"You'd ought to have one, Mart," said Mabel affectionately.
+
+The wife of a month flushed brightly. With her loosened bronze braid
+hanging over her shoulder, her blue eyes soft with happiness, and her
+full figure only slightly disguised by the thin nightgown and wrapper
+she wore, she looked the incarnation of potent youth and beauty.
+
+"I'd love it," she said, burying her hot cheeks in the little space
+between Leroy's fluffy crown and the collar of his soggy little double
+gown.
+
+"I love 'em, too," Mabel agreed. "But they cert'ny do tie you down.
+Dette was the same way--only I sort of forgot it."
+
+"If this salary was going to keep up, I'd like a dozen of 'em!" Martie
+smiled.
+
+"Well, Wallace ought to do well," Mabel conceded. "But of course, you
+can't be sure. My idea is to plunge in and HAVE them, regardless.
+Things'll fit if they've GOT to."
+
+"That's the NICEST way," Martie said timidly. She had married, knowing
+nothing of wifehood and motherhood, except the one fact that the matter
+of children must be left entirely to chance. But she did not like to
+tell Mabel so.
+
+She sat on in the pleasant morning sunshine, utterly happy, utterly at
+ease. The baby went to sleep as the two women murmured together.
+Outside the lace-curtained windows busy Geary Street had long been
+astir. Wagons rattled up and down; cable-cars clanged. Sunlight had
+already conquered the summer fog. It was nine o'clock.
+
+Mabel was enjoying tea and toast, but Martie refused to join her. If
+every hour had not been so blissful the young wife would have said that
+the happiest time of the day was when she and Wallace wandered out into
+the sunshine together for breakfast.
+
+Presently she slipped away to take the bath that was a part of her
+morning routine now, and to wake Wallace. With his tumbled hair, his
+flushed face and his pale blue pajama jacket open at the throat Martie
+thought him no more than a delightful, drowsy boy. She sat on the edge
+of the bed beside him, teasing him to open his eyes.
+
+"Ah--you darling!" Wallace was not too sleepy to appreciate her cool,
+fresh kisses. "Oh, Lord, I'm a wreck! What time is it?"
+
+"Nearly ten. You've had ten hours' sleep, darling. I don't know what
+you WANT!" Martie answered--at the bureau now, with the glory of her
+hair falling about her.
+
+While they dressed they talked; delicious irrelevant chatter punctuated
+with laughter and kisses. The new stock company was a success, and
+Wallace working hard and happily. At ten the young Bannisters went
+forth in search of breakfast, the best meal of the day.
+
+Martie loved the city: Market Street, Kearney Street, Union Square. She
+loved the fresh breath of the morning in her face. She always had her
+choice of flowers at the curb market about Lotta's fountain, pinning a
+nodding bunch of roses, Shasta daisies, pansies, or carnations at the
+belt of her white shirtwaists. They went to the Vienna Bakery or to
+Swain's for their leisurely meal, unless Wallace was hungry enough to
+beg for the Poodle Dog, or they felt rich enough for the Palace. Now
+and then they walked out of the familiar neighbourhood and tried a
+strange restaurant or hotel--but not often.
+
+Usually Martie had Swain's famous toasted muffins for her breakfast,
+daintily playing with coffee and fruit while Wallace disposed of
+cereal, eggs and ham, and fried potatoes. She used to marvel that he
+never grew fat on this hearty fare; sometimes he had sharp touches of
+indigestion.
+
+Over their meal they talked untiringly, marvelling anew at the miracle
+of their finding each other. Martie learned her husband's nature as if
+it had been a book. Sensitive here--evasive there; a little coarse,
+perhaps, a little simple. However surprising his differences it was for
+her to adapt herself. She was almost glad when his unconscious demands
+required of her the smallest sacrifice; getting so much, how glad she
+was to give!
+
+After breakfast, when Wallace was not rehearsing and they were free to
+amuse themselves, they prowled through the Chinese quarter, and through
+the Italian colony. They rode on windy "dummies" out to the beach, and
+went scattering peanut shells along the wet sands. They visited the
+Park, the Mint, and the big baths, or crossed to Oakland or Sausalito,
+where Martie learned to swim. Martie found Wallace tireless in his
+appetite for excursions, and committed herself cheerfully to his
+guidance. Catching a train, they rejoiced; missing it, they were none
+the less happy.
+
+Twice a week a matinee performance brought Wallace to the Granada
+Theatre at one o'clock. On other days, rehearsals began at eleven and
+ended at three or occasionally as late as four. The theatre life
+charmed Martie like a fairy tale. She never grew tired of its thrill.
+
+It was gratifying in the first place to enter the door marked "Stage"
+with a supplementary legend, NO ADMITTANCE, and pass the old doorkeeper
+who knew and liked her. The dark passages beyond, smelling of escaping
+gas and damp straw, of unaired rooms and plumbing and fresh paint, were
+perfumed with romance to her, as were the little dressing rooms with
+old photographs stuck in the loosened wallpaper and dim initials
+scratched on the bare walls, and odd wigs and scarfs and paint jars
+littering the shelves. Wallace making up his face was an exalted being
+in the eyes of his wife.
+
+When the play began, she took her station in the wings--silent,
+unobtrusive, eager to keep out of everybody's way, eager not to miss a
+word of the play. The man over her head, busy with his lights; the one
+or two shirt-sleeved, elderly men who invariably stood dispassionately
+watching the performance; the stage-hands; the various members of the
+cast: for all these she had a smile, and their answering smiles were
+Martie's delight.
+
+"Take off ten pounds, Martie, and Bellew will give you a show some
+time!" said Maybelle La Rue, who was Mabel Cluett in private life.
+Martie gasped at the mere thought. She determined to diet.
+
+A few months before, she had supposed that social intercourse was a
+large factor in the actor's life, that midnight suppers were shared by
+the cast, and that intimacy of an unconventional if harmless nature
+reigned among them. Now, with some surprise, she learned that this was
+not the case. The actors, leaving the play at different moments,
+quietly got into their street clothes and disappeared; so that Mabel
+and Wallace, usually holding the stage for the last few moments by
+reason of their respective parts of maid and lover, often left a
+theatre empty of performers except for themselves. Jesse would
+frequently reach home enough earlier to be sound asleep when his wife
+rushed in to seize her hungry and fretting baby. Little Leroy spent the
+early evening in Martie's bed; one of the maids in the house being paid
+in Mabel's old finery for coming to look at the children now and then.
+
+At intervals the Bannisters and the Cluetts did have little
+after-theatre suppers, but Martie was heroically dieting, Mabel tired
+and sleepy, and both gentlemen somewhat subject to indigestion. So
+Martie and Wallace more often went alone, Martie drinking bouillon and
+nibbling a cracker, and her husband devouring large orders of coffee
+and scrambled eggs.
+
+They had been married perhaps eight weeks when Wallace astonished her
+by drinking too much. She had always fancied herself too broad-minded
+to resent this in the usual wifely way, but the fact angered her, and
+she suffered over the incident for days.
+
+It was immediately after the termination of his successful engagement,
+and he and the Cluetts were celebrating the inauguration of a rest.
+With two or three other members of the cast, they went to dine at the
+Cliff House, preceding the dinner with several cocktails apiece. There
+was a long wait for the planked steak, during which time more cocktails
+were ordered; Martie, who had merely tasted the first one, looking on
+amiably as the others drank.
+
+Presently Mabel began to laugh unrestrainedly, much to Martie's
+half-comprehending embarrassment. The men, far from seeming to be
+shocked by her hysteria, laughed violently themselves.
+
+"Time f'r 'nother round cocktails!" Jesse said. Martie turned to her
+husband.
+
+"Wallace! Don't order any more. Not until we've had some solid food,
+anyway. Can't you see that we don't need them?"
+
+"What is it, dear?" Wallace moved his eyes heavily to look at her. His
+face was flushed, and as he spoke he wet his lips with his tongue.
+"Whatever you say, darling," he said earnestly. "You have only to ask,
+and I will give you anything in my power. Let me know what you wish----"
+
+"I want you not to drink any more," Martie said distressedly.
+
+"Why not, Martie--why not, li'l girl?" Wallace asked her caressingly.
+He put his arm about her shoulders, breathing hotly in her face. "Do
+you know that I am crazy about you?" he murmured.
+
+"If you are," Martie answered, with an uncomfortable glance about for
+watching eyes, "please, please----!"
+
+"Martie," he said lovingly, "do you think I am drinking too much?"
+
+"Well--well, I think you have had enough, Wallace," she stammered.
+
+"Dearie, I will stop if you say so," he answered, "but you amuse me. I
+am just as col' sober----" And, a fresh reinforcement of cocktails
+having arrived, he drank one off as he spoke, setting down the little
+empty glass with a long gasp.
+
+After that the long evening was an agony to Martie. Mabel laughed and
+screamed; wine was spilled; the food was wasted and wrecked. Wallace's
+face grew hotter and hotter. Jesse became sodden and sleepy; champagne
+packed in a bucket of ice was brought, and Martie saw Wallace's gold
+pieces pay for it.
+
+It was not an unusual scene. She had looked on at just such scenes,
+taking place at the tables all about her, more than once in the last
+few weeks. Even now, this was not the only group that had dined less
+wisely than well. But the shame of it, the fear of what might happen
+before Wallace was safely at home in bed, sickened Martie to the soul.
+
+She went to the dressing room with Mabel, who was sick. Presently they
+were all out in a drizzling rain, stumbling their way up the hill and
+blundering aboard a street car. Two nice, quiet women on the opposite
+seat watched the group in shocked disgust; Martie felt that she would
+never hold up her head again. Wallace fell when they got off, and his
+hat rolled in the mud. Martie tried to help him, somehow got him
+upstairs to his room, somehow got him into bed, where he at once fell
+asleep, and snored.
+
+It was just eleven o'clock. Martie washed her face, and brushed her
+hair, and sat down, in a warm wrapper, staring gloomily at the
+unconscious form on the bed. She could hear Mabel and Jesse laughing
+and quarrelling in the room adjoining. Presently Mabel came in for the
+baby, who usually slept in Martie's room during the earlier part of the
+night, so that his possible crying would not disturb Bernadette.
+
+"Poor Wallace--he is all in, down and out!" Mabel said, settling
+herself to nurse the baby. She looked flushed and excited still, but
+was otherwise herself. "He certainly was lit up like a battleship," she
+added in an amused voice; "as for me, I'm ashamed of myself--I'm always
+that way!"
+
+Martie's indignant conviction was that Mabel might indeed be ashamed of
+herself, and this airy expression of what should have been penitence
+too deep for words, gave her a curious shock.
+
+"They all do it," said Mabel, smiling after a long yawn, "and I suppose
+it's better to have their wives with 'em, than to have 'em go off by
+themselves!"
+
+"They all SHOULDN'T do it!" Martie answered sombrely.
+
+"Well, no; I suppose they shouldn't!" Mabel conceded amiably. She
+carried the baby away, and Martie sat on, gazing sternly at the
+unconscious Wallace.
+
+Half an hour passed, another half hour. Martie had intended to do some
+serious thinking, but she found herself sleepy.
+
+After a while she crept in beside her husband, and went to sleep, her
+heart still hot with anger.
+
+But when the morning came she forgave him, as she was often to forgive
+him. What else could she do? The sunlight was streaming into their
+large, shabby bedroom, cable cars were rattling by, fog whistles from
+the bay penetrated the soft winter air. Martie was healthily hungry for
+breakfast, Wallace awakened good natured and penitent.
+
+"You were a darling to me last night, Mart," he said appreciatively.
+
+Martie had not known he was awake. She turned from her mirror,
+regarding him steadily between the curtains of her shining hair.
+
+"And you're a darling not to rub it in," Wallace pursued.
+
+"I WOULD rub it in," Martie said in a hurt voice, "if I thought it
+would do any good!"
+
+Wallace sat up, and pressed his hands against his forehead.
+
+"Well, believe me--that was the last!" he said fervently. "Never again!"
+
+"Oh, dearest," Martie said, coming to sit beside him, "I hope you mean
+that!" That he did mean it, they both believed.
+
+Half an hour later, when they went out to breakfast, she was in her
+happiest mood. The little cloud, in vanishing, had left the sky clearer
+than before. But some little quality of blind admiration and faith was
+gone from her wifeliness thereafter.
+
+In December the stock company had a Re-engagement Extraordinary, and
+Martie got her first part. It was not much of a part--three lines--but
+she approached it with passionate seriousness, and when the first
+rehearsal came, rattled off her three lines so glibly that the entire
+jaded company and the director enjoyed a refreshing laugh. At the
+costumier's, in a fascinating welter of tarnished and shabby garments,
+she selected a suitable dress, and Wallace coached her, made up her
+face, and prompted her with great pride. So the tiny part went well,
+and one of the papers gave a praising line to "Junoesque Miss
+Salisbury." These were happy days. Martie loved the odorous, dark,
+crowded world behind the scenes, loved to be a part of it. This was
+living indeed!
+
+And Sally was expecting a baby! Martie laughed aloud from sheer
+excitement and pleasure when the news came. It was almost like having
+one herself; in one way even more satisfactory, because she was too
+busy now to be interrupted. She spent the first money she had ever
+earned in sending Sally a present for the baby; smiling again whenever
+she pictured Sally was showing it to old friends in Monroe: "From
+Martie; isn't it gorgeous?"
+
+The weeks fled by. Wallace began to talk of moving to New York. It was
+always their dream. Instinctively they wanted New York. Their talk of
+it, their plans for it, were as enthusiastic as they were ignorant, if
+Wallace could only get the chance to play on Broadway! That seemed to
+both of them the goal of their ambition. Always hopeful of another
+part, Martie began to read and study seriously. She had much spare
+time, and she used it. From everybody and everything about her she
+learned: a few German phrases from the rheumatic old man whose wife
+kept the lodging house; Juliet's lines and the lines of Lady Macbeth
+from Mabel's shabby books; and something of millinery from the little
+Irishwoman who kept a shop on the corner, with "Elise" written across
+its window. She learned all of Wallace's parts, and usually Mabel's as
+well. Often she went to the piano in the musty parlour of the Geary
+Street house and played "The Two Grenadiers" and "Absent." She brimmed
+with energy; while Wallace or Mabel wrangled with the old costumier,
+Martie was busily folding and smoothing the garments of jesters and
+clowns and Dolly Vardens. She had a curious instinct for trade terms;
+she could not buy a yard of veiling without an eager little talk with
+the saleswoman; the chance phrase of a conductor or the woman in the
+French laundry amused and interested her.
+
+Away from all the repressing influences of her childhood, healthy and
+happy, she met the claims of the new state with a splendid and
+unthinking passion. To yield herself generously and supremely was the
+only natural thing; she had no dread and no regret. From the old life
+she brought to this hour only an instinctive reticence, so that Mabel
+never had the long talks and the short talks she had anticipated with
+the bride, and never dared say a word to Martie that might not have
+been as safely said to Bernadette.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+On A hot Sunday in early March Martie came back from church to find
+Wallace gone. She had had no breakfast, but had stopped on the way home
+to get six enormous oranges in a paper bag. The heat had given her a
+stupid headache, and she felt limp and tired. It was delicious to
+undress, to climb into the smoothed bed, and to sink back against the
+pillows.
+
+A bulky newspaper, smelling of printer's ink, was on the chair beside
+her bed, but Martie did not open it for a while. Serious thoughts held
+her. Opening her orange, she said to herself, with a little flutter at
+her heart, that it must be so. She was going to have a baby!
+
+Fear and pride shook her. It seemed a tremendous thing; not at all like
+the other babies other women had been having since time began. She
+could not believe it--of herself, Martie Monroe, who had been an
+ignorant girl only a few months ago!
+
+Yet she had been vaguely suspecting the state of affairs for more than
+a week; when morning after morning found her languid and weary, when
+Wallace's fork crushing an egg-yolk had given her a sudden sensation of
+nausea. She felt so stupid, so tired all the time. She could not sleep
+at night; she could hardly stay awake in the daytime.
+
+Her eyes were heavy now. She glanced indifferently at the newspaper,
+smiled a contented little smile, and, murmuring, "I wonder--I wonder--"
+and fell into delicious sleep.
+
+She slept for a long time. Wallace, coming in at two o'clock, awakened
+her. Afternoon sunlight was streaming into the room, which was scented
+with the decaying sweetness of orange peel. Dazed and stupid, yet
+dreamily content, Martie smiled upon him. He hated Sunday rehearsals:
+she could see that he was in a bad mood, and his obvious effort to
+think of her and to disguise his own feeling touched her.
+
+"Tired?" she asked affectionately. "Isn't it hot?"
+
+"How are you?" Wallace questioned in turn. "You felt so rotten
+yesterday."
+
+He sat down beside her, and pushed the dark hair from his big forehead,
+and she saw that his face was damp and pale.
+
+"Fine!" she assured him, laying her hand over his.
+
+They remained so for a full minute, Wallace staring gloomily at
+nothing, Martie's eyes idly roving about the room. Then the man reached
+for a section of the paper, glanced at it indifferently, and flung it
+aside.
+
+"There wasn't any rehearsal this morning," he observed after a pause.
+He cleared his throat self-consciously before speaking and Martie,
+glancing quickly at him, saw that he intended the statement to have a
+significance.
+
+"Where were you then?" she asked duly.
+
+"I was--I was--" He hesitated, expelling a long breath suddenly.
+"Something came up," he amended, "and I had to see about it."
+
+"What came up?" Martie pursued, more anxious to set his mind at rest,
+than curious.
+
+"Well--it all goes back to some time ago, Mart; before I knew you,"
+Wallace said, in a carefully matter-of-fact tone. But she could see
+that he was troubled, and a faint stir of apprehension shook her own
+heart.
+
+"Money?" she guessed quickly.
+
+"No," he said reassuringly, "nothing like that!"
+
+He got up, and restlessly circled the room, drawing the shade that was
+rattling gently at the window, flinging his coat across a chair.
+
+Then he went back, and sat down by the bed again, locking his dropped
+hands loosely between his knees, and looking steadily at the worn old
+colourless carpet.
+
+"You see this Golda--" he began.
+
+"Golda who?" Martie echoed.
+
+"This girl I've been talking to this morning," Wallace supplied
+impatiently; "Golda White."
+
+"Who is she?" Martie asked, bewildered, as his heavy voice stopped on
+the name.
+
+"Oh, she's a girl I used to know! I haven't seen her for eight or ten
+years--since I left Portland, in fact."
+
+"But who IS she, Wallie?" Martie had propped herself in pillows, she
+was wide awake now, and her voice was firm and quick.
+
+"Well, wait and I'll tell you, I'll tell you the whole thing. I don't
+believe there's anything in it, but anyway, I'll tell you, and you and
+I can sort of talk it over. You see I met this girl in Portland, when I
+was a kid in my uncle's lumber office. I was about twenty-two or three,
+and she was ten years older than that. But we ran with the same crowd a
+lot, and I saw her all the time----"
+
+"She was in the office?"
+
+"Sure. She was Uncle Chester's steno. She was a queer sort of girl;
+pretty, too. I was sore because my father made me work there, and I
+wanted to join the navy or go to college, or go on the stage, and she'd
+sit there making herself collars and things, and sort of console me.
+She was engaged to a fellow in Los Angeles, or she said she was.
+
+"We liked each other all right, she'd tell me her troubles and I'd tell
+her mine; she had a stepfather she hated, and sometimes she'd cry and
+all that. The crowd began to jolly us about liking each other, and I
+could see she didn't mind it much----"
+
+"Perhaps she loved you, Wallie?" Martie suggested on a quick, excited
+breath.
+
+"You bet your life she loved me!" he affirmed positively.
+
+"Poor girl!" said the wife in pitying anticipation of a tragedy.
+
+"Don't call her 'poor girl!'" Wallace said, his face darkening. "She'll
+look out for herself. There's a lot of talk," he added with a sort of
+dull resentment, "about 'leading young girls astray,' and 'betraying
+innocence,' and all that, but I want to tell you right now that nine
+times out of ten it's the girls that do the leading astray! You ask any
+fellow----"
+
+The expression on Martie's face did not alter by the flicker of an
+eyelash. She had been looking steadily at him, and she still stared
+steadily. But she felt her throat thicken, and the blood begin to pump
+convulsively at her heart.
+
+"But Wallace," she stammered eagerly, "she wasn't--she wasn't----"
+
+"Sure she was!" he said coarsely; "she was as rotten as the rest of
+them!"
+
+"But--but----" Martie's lips felt dry, her voice failed her.
+
+"I was only a kid, I tell you," said Wallace, uneasily watching her.
+"Why, Mart," he added, dropping on his knees beside the bed, and
+putting his arms about her, "all boys are like that! Every one knows
+it. There isn't a man you know----And you're the only girl I ever
+loved, Sweetheart, you know that. Men are different, that's all. A boy
+growing up can't any more keep out of it----And I never lied to you,
+Mart. I told you when we were engaged that I wished to God, for your
+sake, that I'd never----"
+
+"Yes, I know!" Martie whispered, shutting her eyes. He kissed her
+suddenly colourless cheek, and she heard him move away.
+
+"Well, to go on with the rest of this," Wallace resumed suddenly.
+Martie opened tired eyes to watch him, but he did not meet her look.
+
+"Golda and I went together for about a year," he said, "and finally she
+got to talking as if we were going to be married. One day--it was a
+rainy day in the office, and I had a cold, and she fixed me up
+something hot to drink--she got to crying, and she said her stepfather
+had ordered her out of the house. I didn't believe it then, and I don't
+believe it now, but anyway, we talked it all over, and she said she was
+going down to Los Angeles and hunt up this other fellow. Well, that
+made me feel kind of sick, because we had been going together for so
+long, and her talking about how things would be when we were married
+and all that, and I said--you know the way you do--'What's the matter
+with us getting married, right now?'"
+
+Martie's face was fixed in a look of agonized attention: she made no
+sound.
+
+"She said we wouldn't have anything to live on," Wallace pursued, not
+looking at his wife, "and that she wanted to take a rest when she got
+married, and have a little fun. Well, I says, we can keep it quiet for
+awhile. Well, we talked about it that day, and after that we would kind
+of josh about it, and finally one day we walked over to the bureau and
+got out a license, and the Justice of the Peace----"
+
+"Wallie--my God!" Martie breathed.
+
+"Well, listen!" he urged her impatiently. "I put a wrong age on the
+license and so did she, and she had told me a lot of lies about
+herself, as I found out later, Martie----"
+
+"So that it wasn't legal!"
+
+"Well, listen. After that we went on with the crowd for a few weeks,
+and we didn't tell anybody. And then this Dr. Prendergast turned up----"
+
+"WHAT Dr. Prendergast!"
+
+"I don't know who he was--a dentist anyway. And he had known Golda
+before, somewhere, and he was crazy about her. His wife was getting a
+divorce, it seems; anyway, he butted right in, and she let him. I don't
+think she had awfully good sense, she would act sort of crazy
+sometimes, as if she didn't know what she was doing. Well, I told her I
+wouldn't stand for that, and we had some fights. But just then my dad
+wrote and told me that he would finance me for a year at Stanford, and
+I began to think I'd like to cut the whole bunch. So I said to Golda:
+'I'm done. I'm going to get out! You keep your mouth shut, and I'll
+keep mine!' She says, 'Leon'--that was Prendergast--'is going to marry
+me, and you'll talk before I do!' So----"
+
+"But, Wallace----"
+
+"But what, dearie?"
+
+"But it wasn't left that way?"
+
+"Now, listen, dearie. Of course it wasn't! She and Prendergast were
+going to leave town, a few days later, but I was kind of worried about
+it, and I finally told my uncle the whole story. Of course he blew up!
+He sent for her, and she came right in, scared to death. He told her
+that he'd give away the whole story to Prendergast, or else he'd give
+her a check for five hundred dollars on her wedding day. She fell for
+it, and we said good-bye. She swore it was only a sort of joke anyway,
+and that the day we--we did it, she'd been filling me up with whisky
+lemonades and all that, and that the whole thing was off. And let me
+tell you that I was glad to beat it! I never saw her again until this
+morning! I went on the stage, and changed my name because the leading
+lady in that show happened to be Thelma Tenney. About a month later my
+uncle wrote me that she had sent him a newspaper notice of her
+marriage, and he had sent her the check. I'll never forget reading that
+letter. I'd been worrying myself black in the face, but that day I went
+on a bust, I can tell you!"
+
+"That marriage would cancel the other?" Martie asked, with a dry throat.
+
+"Sure it would!" he said easily.
+
+"But now--now----" she pursued fearfully.
+
+"Now she's turned up," he said, a shadow falling on his heavy face
+again. "She was at the theatre last night. God knows what she's been
+doing all these years; she looks awful. She saw my picture in some
+paper, and she came straight to the city. She found out where I lived,
+and this morning, while you were at church, Mabel came in and said a
+lady wanted to see me. I took her to breakfast. I didn't know what to
+do with her--and we talked."
+
+"And what does she say, Wallie--what does she want?"
+
+"Oh, she wants anything she can get! She doesn't know that I'm married.
+If she did, I suppose she might make herself unpleasant along that
+line!"
+
+"But she has no claim on you! She married another man!"
+
+"She says now that she never was married to Prendergast!"
+
+"But she WAS!" Martie said hotly. Her voice dropped vaguely. Her eyes
+were fixed and glassy with growing apprehension. "Perhaps she was lying
+about that," she whispered, as if to herself.
+
+"She'd lie about anything!" Wallace supplied.
+
+"But if she wasn't, Wallace, if she wasn't--then would that second
+marriage cancel the first?" she asked feverishly.
+
+"I should THINK so!" he answered. "Shouldn't you?"
+
+"Shouldn't _I_?" she echoed, with her first flash of anger. "Why, what
+do _I_ know about it? What do _I_ know about it? I don't know anything!
+You come to me with this now--NOW!"
+
+"Don't talk like that!" he pleaded. "I feel--I feel awfully about it,
+Martie! I can't tell you how I feel! But the whole thing was so long
+ago it had sort of gone out of my mind. Every fellow does things that
+he's ashamed of, Mart--things that he's sorry for; but you always think
+that you'll marry some day, and have kids, and that the world will go
+on like it always has----"
+
+The fire suddenly died out of Martie. In a deadly calm she sat back
+against her pillows, and began to gather up her masses of loosened hair.
+
+"If she is right----" she began, and stopped.
+
+"She's not right, I tell you!" Wallace said. "She hasn't got a leg to
+stand on!"
+
+"No," Martie conceded lifelessly, patiently. "But if she SHOULD be
+right----"
+
+"But I tell you she isn't, Mart!"
+
+"Yes, I know you do." The deadly gentleness was again in her voice. "I
+know you do!" she repeated mildly. "Only--only----" Her lip trembled
+despite her desperate effort, she felt her throat thicken and the tears
+come.
+
+Instantly he was beside her again, and with her arms still raised she
+felt him put his own arms about her, and felt his penitent kisses
+through the veil of her hair. A sickness swept over her: they were here
+in the sacred intimacy of their own room, the room to which he had
+brought her as a bride only a few months before.
+
+She freed herself with what dignity she could command. He asked her a
+hundred times if she loved him, if she could forgive him. Her one
+impulse was to silence him, to have him go away.
+
+"I know--I know how you feel, Wallie! I'm sorry--for you and myself,
+and the whole thing! I'm terribly sorry! I--I don't know what we can
+do. I have to go away, of course; I can't stay here until we know; and
+you'll have to investigate, and find out just what she claims. I'll go
+to Sally, I suppose. People can think I've come up to help when the
+baby comes--I don't care what they think!"
+
+"I thought you might go to Oakland for awhile," he agreed, gratefully;
+"but of course it'll be best to have you go to Sally--it'll only be for
+a few days. Mart, I feel rotten about it!"
+
+"I know you do, Wallace," she answered nervously.
+
+"To spring this on you--it's just rotten!"
+
+Martie was silent. Her mind was in a whirl.
+
+"Will you go out?" she asked simply. "I want to dress."
+
+"What do you want me to go out for?" he asked, amazed.
+
+Again his wife was silent. Her cheeks were bright scarlet, her eyes
+hard and dry. She looked at him steadily, and he got clumsily to his
+feet.
+
+"Sure I'll go out!" he said stupidly. "I'll do anything you want me to.
+I feel like a skunk about this--it had sort of slipped my mind, Mart!
+Every fellow lets himself in for something like this."
+
+Trapped. It was the one thought she had when he was gone, and when she
+had sprung feverishly from bed, and was quickly dressing. Trapped, in
+this friendly, comfortable room, where she had been so happy and so
+proud! She had been so innocently complacent over her state as this
+man's wife, she had planned for their future so courageously. Now she
+was--what? Now she was--what?
+
+Just to escape somehow and instantly, that was the first wild impulse.
+He was gone, but he was coming back: he must not find her here. She
+must disappear, nobody must ever find her. Sally and her father, Rose
+and Rodney must never know! Martie Monroe, married to a man who was
+married before, disgraced, exiled, lost. Nobody knew that she was going
+to have a baby, but Monroe would surmise that.
+
+Oh, fool--fool--fool that she had been to marry him so! But it was too
+late for that. She must face the situation now, and fret over the past
+some other day.
+
+She had felt the thought of a return to Monroe intolerable: but quickly
+she changed her mind. Sally's home might be an immediate retreat, she
+could rest there, and plan there. Her sister was eagerly awaiting an
+answer to the letter in which she begged Martie to come to her for the
+month of the baby's birth.
+
+Martie, packing frantically, glanced at the clock. It was two o'clock
+now, she could get the four o'clock boat. She would be in peaceful
+Monroe at seven. And after that----?
+
+After that she did not know. Should she ever return to Wallace, under
+any circumstances? Should she tell Sally? Should she hide both
+Wallace's revelations and the morning's earlier hopes of motherhood?
+
+Child that she was, she could not decide. She had had no preparation
+for these crises, she was sick with shock and terror. Married to a man
+who was already married--and perhaps to have a baby!
+
+But she never faltered in her instant determination to leave him. If
+she was not his wife, at least she could face the unknown future far
+more bravely than the dubious present. If she had been wrong, she would
+not add more wrong.
+
+With her bag packed, and her hat pinned on, she paused, and looked
+about the room. The window curtain flapped uncertainly, a gritty wind
+blew straight down Geary Street. The bed was unmade, the sweet orange
+peels still scented the air.
+
+Martie suddenly flung her gloves aside, and knelt down beside her bed.
+She had an impulse to make her last act in this room a prayer.
+
+Wallace, pale and quiet, opened the door, and as she rose from her
+knees their eyes met. In a second they were in each other's arms, and
+Martie was sobbing on his shoulder.
+
+"Mart--my darling little girl! I'm so sorry!"
+
+"I know you are--I know you are!"
+
+"It's only for a few days, dearie--until I settle her once and for all!"
+
+"That's all!"
+
+"And then you'll come back, and we'll go have Spanish omelette at the
+Poodle Dog, won't we?"
+
+"Oh, Wallie, darling, I hope--I hope we will!"
+
+She gasped on a long breath, and dried her eyes.
+
+"How much money have you got, dearie?"
+
+"About--I don't know. About four dollars, I think."
+
+"Well, here--" He was all the husband again, stuffing gold pieces into
+her purse. "You're going down to the four boat? I'll take you down. And
+wire me when you get there, Martie, so I won't worry. And tell Sally I
+wish her luck, I'll certainly be glad to hear the news." They were at
+the doorway; he put his arm about her. "You DO love me, Mart?"
+
+"Oh, Wallie----!" The tender moment, following upon her hour of lonely
+agony, was almost too much. "We--we didn't think--this would be the end
+of our happy time, did we?" she stammered. And as they kissed again,
+both faces were wet with tears.
+
+Sally met her; a Sally ample of figure and wonderful in complexion. All
+the roses of spring were in Sally's smiling face; she laughed and
+rejoiced at their meeting with a certain quality of ease and poise for
+which Martie was puzzled to account, but which was new to quiet,
+conventional Sally. Sally was in the serene mood that immediately
+precedes motherhood; all the complex elements of her life were
+temporarily lapped in a joyous peace. Of Martie's hidden agony she
+suspected nothing.
+
+She took Martie to the tiny house by the river; the plates and spoons
+and pillow-slips looked strange to Martie, and for every one of them
+Sally had an amused history. Martie felt, with a little twinge of pain,
+that she would have liked a handsomer home for Sally, would have liked
+a more imposing husband than the tired, dirty, boyish-looking Joe,
+would have liked the first Monroe baby to come to a prettier layette
+than these plain little slips and flannels; but Sally saw everything
+rose-coloured. They had almost no money, she told Martie, with a happy
+laugh. Already Sally, who had been brought up in entire ignorance of
+the value of money, was watching the pennies. Never had there been
+economy like this in Pa's house!
+
+Sally kept house on a microscopic scale that amused and a little
+impressed Martie. Every apple, every onion, was used to the last scrap.
+Every cold muffin was reheated, or bit of cold toast was utilized. When
+Carrie David brought the young householders a roasted chicken, it was
+an event. The fowl was sliced and stewed and minced and made into soup
+before it went into the family annals to shine forevermore as "the
+delicious chicken Cousin Carrie brought us before the baby was born."
+Sally's cakes were made with one egg, her custards reinforced with
+cornstarch, her cream was only "top milk." Even her house was only half
+a house: the four rooms were matched by four other rooms, with only a
+central wall between. But Sally had a square yard, and a garden, and
+Martie came to love every inch of the little place, so rich in
+happiness and love.
+
+The days went on and on, and there was no word of Wallace. Martie's
+heart was like lead in her breast. She talked with Sally, set tables,
+washed dishes, she laughed and planned, and all the while misgivings
+pressed close about her. Sometimes, kneeling in church in the soft warm
+afternoons of early spring, she told herself that if this one cup were
+taken from her lips, if she were only proved to be indeed an honourable
+wife, she would bear with resignation whatever life might bring. She
+would welcome poverty, welcome humiliations, welcome the suffering and
+the burden of the baby's coming--but dear Lord, dear Lord, she could
+not face the shame that menaced her now!
+
+Sally saw the change in her, the new silence and gravity, and wondered.
+
+"Martie, dearest, something's worrying you?"
+
+"Nothing much, dear. Wallace--Wallace doesn't write to me as often as I
+should like!"
+
+"You didn't quarrel with him, Mart?"
+
+"Oh, no--he's the best husband in the world. We never quarrel."
+
+"But it's not like you to fret so," Sally grieved. Presently she
+ventured a daring question: "Has it ever occurred to you, Mart, that
+perhaps----"
+
+Martie laughed shakily.
+
+"The way you and Grace wish babies on to people--it's the limit!"
+
+Sally laughed, too, and if she was unconvinced, at least she said no
+more. She encouraged Martie to take long walks, to help with the
+housework, and finally, to attempt composition. Sitting at the clean
+little kitchen table, in the warm evenings, Martie wrote an article
+upon the subject of independence for women.
+
+For a few days she laboured tirelessly with it: then she tired of it,
+and flung it aside. Other things absorbed her attention.
+
+First came the expected letter from Wallace. Martie's hand shook as she
+took it from the postman. Now she would know--now she would know!
+Whatever the news, the suspense was over.
+
+Perhaps the hardest moment of the hard weeks was when she realized that
+the tension was not snapped, after all. Wallace wrote affectionately,
+but with maddening vagueness. He missed his girl, he had a rotten cold,
+he was not working now. Golda was raising hell. He did not believe half
+that she said, but he had written to his uncle, who advised him to go
+to Portland, and investigate the matter there. So unless Martie heard
+to the contrary he would probably go north this week. Anyway, Martie
+had better stay where she was, and not worry.
+
+Not worry! It became a marvel to Martie that life could go on for any
+one while her own future was so frightfully uncertain. She was going to
+have a baby, and she was not married--that was the summary of the
+situation. It was like something in a book, only worse than any book
+that she had ever read. Sometimes she felt as if her brain were being
+affected by the sheer horror of it. Sometimes, Sally noticed, Martie
+fell into such deep brooding that she neither heard nor saw what went
+on about her. Her mind was in a continual fever; she was exhausted with
+fruitless hoping and unavailing endurance.
+
+At the end of a hot, endless April day, into the darkness of Sally's
+disordered bedroom, came life. A little hemstitched blanket had been
+made ready for the baby; it seemed to Martie's frightened heart nothing
+short of a miracle when Sally's crying daughter was actually wrapped in
+it. Martie had travelled a long road since the placid spring afternoon
+when they had made that blanket.
+
+But the strain and fright were over now; Sally lay at peace, her eyes
+shut in a white face. The tears dried on Martie's cheeks; Mrs. Hawkes
+and Dr. Ben were even laughing as they consulted and worked together.
+Martie took the baby down to the kitchen for her bath, and it seemed
+strange to her that the dried peaches Sally had set on the stove that
+morning were still placidly simmering in their saucepan.
+
+For a day or two everything was unreal, the smoke of battle and the
+shadow of death still hung over the little household. Gradually, the
+air cleared. Joe and Martie ate the deluge of layer cakes and apple
+pies--debated over details. Joe's mother came in to bathe the baby and
+Sally did nothing but laugh and eat and sleep. She called her
+first-born Elizabeth, for her mother; and sometimes the sisters
+wondered if Ma and Lydia ever talked about the first baby, and ever
+longed to see her first tiny charms.
+
+The event shook Martie from her brooding, and brought her the first
+real happiness she had known since the terrible morning of Golda's
+appearance. She and Sally found the care of the baby only a delight,
+and disputed for the privilege of bathing and dressing her.
+
+One episode in the tiny Elizabeth's life was unusual, and long years
+afterward Martie found a place for it in her own slowly-forming
+theories. At the time the three young persons debated it amusedly and
+carelessly before it came to be just an accepted, if incomprehensible,
+fact.
+
+Dr. Ben, whose modest bill for attendance upon Sally was promptly paid,
+had sent the baby a check for seventy-five dollars. The card with this
+check was merely pencilled: "For Miss Elizabeth's first quarter, from
+Uncle Ben." At first Sally and Martie and Joe were puzzled to
+understand it.
+
+Then suddenly Sally remembered her talk with the doctor a year ago.
+This was the "mother's pay" he had spoken about then.
+
+"It does seem funny that we were only girls then, and that to speak of
+such things really made me almost die of embarrassment," smiled Sally,
+"and now, here we are, and we know all about it! But now, the question
+is, what to do?"
+
+Sally and Joe were at first for a polite refusal of the money. It was
+so "queer," they said. It seemed too "odd." It was not as if Pa had
+decided to do it, or as if Dr. Ben really was the child's uncle. It was
+better not to chance possible complications--
+
+Presently Joe dropped out of this debate. He said simply that it was a
+deuce of a lot of money, and that there were lots of things that the
+baby needed, but he didn't care either way. Sally then said that it was
+settled, for if he didn't care the check should go back.
+
+But here Martie found herself with an opinion. She said suddenly that
+she thought Sally would be foolish to refuse. It was Dr. Ben's money.
+If he endowed a library, or put a conservatory into the Monroe Park,
+Sally would enjoy them to the full. Why shouldn't he do this? His money
+and the way he spent it were his own affair.
+
+"He's working out an experiment, Sally. I don't see why you shouldn't
+let him. You may never have another baby, but if you do, why six
+hundred a year is just that much better than three!"
+
+There were several days of debate. It was inevitable that the check
+lying on Sally's cheap little three-drawer bureau should suggest things
+it would purchase. Martie summarily took it to the Bank one day and
+brought home crackling bills in exchange. One of the first things that
+was purchased was the perambulator in which 'Lizabeth was proudly
+wheeled to call upon her benefactor.
+
+Then the dreadful days began to go by again, and still there was no
+letter from Wallace. June came in with enervating, dry heat, and Martie
+wilted under it. There was no longer any doubt about her condition. The
+hour was coming closer when Sally must know, when all Monroe must know
+just how mad a venture her marriage had been.
+
+One day she had a letter from Mabel, who begged her to come back to the
+city. Jesse was sure he could get her an occasional engagement; it was
+better than fretting herself to death there in that "jay" town.
+
+Martie sat thinking for a long time with this letter in her hand. For
+the first time thoughts consciously hostile to Wallace swept through
+her mind. She analyzed the motives that had urged her into marriage;
+she had been taught to think of it as a woman's surest refuge. If she
+had not been so taught, what might she have done for herself in this
+year? Was it fair of him to take what she had to give then, in quick
+and generous devotion, and to fail her so utterly now, when the old
+physical supremacy was gone, and when she must meet, in the future, not
+only her own needs but the needs of a child? He had known more of life
+than she--her mother and father had known more--why had nobody helped
+her?
+
+That evening, when Sally and Joe had gone to the moving pictures,
+leaving Martie to listen for 'Lizabeth's little snuffle of awakening,
+should she unexpectedly awake, Martie cleared the dining-room table and
+wrote to Wallace.
+
+This was not one of her cheerful, courageous letters, filled with
+affectionate solicitude for him, and brave hope for the future. She
+wept over the pages, she reproached and blamed him. For the first time
+she told him of the baby's coming. She was his wife, he must help her
+get away, at least until she was well again. She was sick of waiting
+and hoping; now he must answer her, he must advise her.
+
+Her face was wet with tears; she went that night to mail it at the
+corner. Afterward she lay long awake, wondering in her ignorant girl's
+heart if such an unwifely tirade were sufficient cause for divorce,
+wondering if he would ever love her again after reading it.
+
+Wallace brought the answer himself, five days later. Coming in from a
+lonely walk, Martie found him eating bread and jam and scrambled eggs
+in Sally's kitchen. The sight of him there in the flesh, smiling and
+handsome, was almost too much for her. She rushed into his arms, and
+sobbed and laughed like a madwoman, as she assured herself of his
+blessed reality.
+
+Sally, in sympathetic tears herself, tried to join in Wallace's
+heartening laugh, and Martie, quieted, sat on the arm of her husband's
+chair, feeling again the delicious comfort of his arm about her, and
+smiling with dark lashes still wet.
+
+After a while they were alone, and then they talked freely.
+
+"Wallie--only tell me this! Have you got enough money to get me away
+somewhere? I can't stay here! You see that! Oh, dearest, if you
+knew----"
+
+"Get you away! Why, you're going with me! We're going to New York!"
+
+Her bewildered eyes were fixed upon him with dawning hope.
+
+"But Golda!" she said.
+
+"Oh, Golda!" He dismissed the adventuress impatiently. "Now I'll tell
+you all about that some time, dear----"
+
+"But, Wallace, it's--it's ALL RIGHT?" Martie must turn the knife in the
+wound now, there must be no more doubt.
+
+"All RIGHT?" The old bombastic, triumphant voice! "Her husband's alive,
+if you call THAT all right!"
+
+"Her husband?" Martie's voice died in a sort of faintness.
+
+"Sure! She was married six years before I ever saw her. Uncle Chess
+says he heard it, and then forgot it, you know the way you do? I've
+been to Portland and Uncle Chess was bully. His old lawyer, whom he
+consulted at the time I left there, was dead, but we dug up the license
+bureau and found what we were after. She had been married all right and
+her husband's still living. We found him in the Home for Incurables up
+there; been there fifteen years. I got a copy of her marriage license
+from the Registrar and if Mrs. Golda White Ferguson ever turns up again
+we'll see who does the talking about bigamy! The she-devil! And I told
+you about meeting Dawson?"
+
+"Oh, God, I thank Thee--I thank Thee!" Martie was breathing to herself,
+her eyes closed. "Dawson?" she asked, when he repeated the name.
+
+Wallace had straightened up; it was quite in his old manner that he
+said:
+
+"I--would--rather work for Emory Dawson than for any man I know of in
+New York!"
+
+"Oh, a manager?"
+
+"The coming manager--you mark what I say!"
+
+"And you met him?" Martie was asking the dutiful questions; but her
+face rested against her husband's as she talked, and she was crying a
+little, in joy and relief.
+
+For answer Wallace gently dislodged her, so that he might take from his
+pocket a letter, the friendly letter that the manager had dashed off.
+
+"He swears he'll book me!" Wallace said, refolding the letter. "He said
+he needs me, and I need him. I borrowed two hundred from Uncle Chess,
+and now it's us to the bright lights, Baby!"
+
+"And nothing but happiness--happiness--happiness!" Martie said,
+returning his handkerchief, and finishing the talk with one of her
+eager kisses and with a child's long sigh.
+
+"I was afraid you might be a little sorry about--November, Wallie,"
+said she, after a while. "You are glad, a little; aren't you?"
+
+"Sure!" he answered good-naturedly. "You can't help it!"
+
+Martie looked at him strangely, as if she were puzzled or surprised.
+Was it her fault? Were women to be blamed for bearing? But she rested
+her case there, and presently Sally came in, wheeling the baby, and
+there was a disorderly dinner of sausages and fresh bread and
+strawberries, with everybody jumping up and sitting down incessantly.
+Wallace was a great addition to the little group; they were all young
+enough to like the pose of lovers, to flush and dimple over the new
+possessives, over the odd readjustment of relationships. The four went
+to see the moving pictures in the evening, and came home strewing
+peanut-shells on the sidewalk, laughing and talking.
+
+Two little clouds spoiled the long-awaited glory of going to New York
+for Martie, when early in July she and Wallace really arranged to go.
+One was the supper he gave a night or two before they left to various
+young members of the Hawkes family, Reddy Johnson, and one or two other
+men. Martie thought it was "silly" to order wine and to attempt a smart
+affair in the dismal white dining room of the hotel; she resented the
+opportunity Wallace gave her old friends to see him when he was not at
+his best. She scolded him for incurring the unnecessary expense.
+
+The second cloud lay in the fact that, without consulting her, he had
+borrowed money from Rodney Parker. This stung Martie's pride bitterly.
+
+"Wallace, WHY did you?" she asked with difficult self-control.
+
+"Oh, well; it was only a hundred; and he's coining money," Wallace
+answered easily. "I breezed into the Bank one day, and he was boasting
+about his job, and his automobile. He took out his bank book and showed
+me his balance. And all of a sudden it occurred to me I might make a
+touch. I told him about Dawson." He looked at his wife's dark,
+resentful face. "Don't you worry, Mart," he said. "YOU didn't borrow
+it!"
+
+Martie silently resuming her packing reflected upon the irony of life.
+She was married, she was going to New York. What a triumphant
+achievement of her dream of a year ago! And yet her heart was so heavy
+that she might almost have envied that old, idle Martie, wandering
+under the trees of Main Street and planning so hopefully for the future.
+
+On the day before she left, exhilarated with the confusion, the new hat
+she had just bought, the packed trunks, she went to see her mother. It
+was a strange hour that she spent in the old sitting room, in the cool,
+stale, home odours, with the home pictures, the jointed gas brackets
+under which she had played solitaire and the square piano where she had
+sung "The Two Grenadiers." Outside, in the sunken garden, summer
+burgeoned fragrantly; the drawn window shades bellied softly to and
+fro, letting in wheeling spokes of light, shutting down the twilight
+again. Lydia and her mother, like gentle ghosts, listened to her,
+reproving and unsympathetic.
+
+"Pa is angry with you, Martie, arid who can blame him?" said Lydia.
+"I'm sure I never heard of such actions, coming from a girl who had
+loving parents and a good home!"
+
+This was the mother's note. Lydia was always an echo.
+
+"It isn't as if you hadn't had everything, Mart. You girls had
+everything you needed--that party at Thanksgiving and all! And you've
+no idea of the TALK in town! Pa feels it terribly. To think that other
+girls, even like Rose, who had no father, should have so much more
+sense than OUR girls."
+
+Martie talked of Sally's baby. "Named for you, Ma," she told her
+mother. And with sudden earnestness she added: "WHY don't you go see it
+some day? It's the dearest baby I ever saw!"
+
+Mrs. Monroe, who had a folded handkerchief in her bony, discoloured
+fingers, now pressed it to her eyes, shaking her head as she did so.
+Lydia gave Martie a resentful look, and her mother a sympathetic one,
+before she said primly:
+
+"If Sally Monroe wanted Ma and me to go see her and her baby, why
+didn't she marry some man Pa could have been proud of, and have a
+church wedding and act in a way becoming to her family?"
+
+To this Martie had nothing to say. She left messages of love for Len
+and for her father. Her mother and sister came with her for good-byes
+to the old porch with its peeling dark paint and woody rose-vines.
+
+"Pa said at noon that you had 'phoned you wanted to come say good-bye,"
+said her mother mildly. "I hope you'll always be happy, Martie, and
+remember that we did our best for you. If you're a good girl, and write
+some day and ask Pa's forgiveness, I think he may come 'round, because
+he was always a most affectionate father to his children."
+
+The toneless, lifeless voice ceased. Martie kissed Lydia's unresponsive
+warm cheek, and her mother's flat soft one. She walked quickly down the
+old garden, through the still rich green, and smelled, as she had
+smelled a thousand times before, the velvety sweetness of wallflowers.
+As she went, she heard her sister say, in a quick, low tone:
+
+"Look, Ma--there's Angela Baxter with that man again. I wonder who on
+earth he is?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+The big train moved smoothly. Martie, her arm laid against the window,
+felt it thrill her to her heart. She smiled steadily as she watched the
+group on the platform, and Sally, Joe, and all the others who had come
+to say good-bye smiled steadily back. Sometimes they shouted messages;
+but they all were secretly anxious for the train to move, and Martie,
+for all her smiling and nodding, was in a fever to be gone.
+
+They vanished; all the faces she knew. The big train slid through
+Monroe. Martie had a last glimpse of Mason and White's--of the
+bridge--of the winery with its pyramids of sweet-smelling purple
+refuse. Outlying ranches, familiar from Sunday walks and drives,
+slipped by. Down near the old Archer ranch, Henry Prout was driving his
+mother into town. The surrey and the rusty white horse were smothered
+in sulphurous dust. It seemed odd to Martie that Henny was driving Mrs.
+Prout into town with an air of actual importance; Henny was clean, and
+the old lady had on cotton gloves and a stiff gray percale. Yet they
+were only going to hot little Monroe. Martie was going to New York!
+
+All her life she remembered the novelty and delight of the trip.
+Wallace was at his best; the new hat had its share in the happy
+recollection. The dining car, the berths, the unchanging routine of the
+day--all charmed her.
+
+She watched her first thunder storm in Chicago with awed pleasure. The
+hour came, when, a little jaded, feeling dirty and tumbled, feeling
+excited and headachy and nervous, Martie saw her neighbours in the car
+begin to straighten garments and gather small possessions. They were
+arriving!
+
+She was silent, as first impressions jumbled themselves together in her
+tired brain. Wallace, at her elbow, was eager with information.
+
+"Look, Mart--this is the Grand Central. They're going to tear all this
+down! Look--that's the subway--those hoods, where the people are going
+down! See over that way--this is Forty-Second Street, one of the
+biggest cross-streets there is--and over that way is Broadway! We can't
+take the subway, I wish we could--you wait until you see the expresses!
+But I'll tell you what we'll do, we'll go over and take a 'bus, on the
+Avenue--see, here's a Childs'--see, there's the new Library! Climb
+right up on the 'bus, if you get a chance, because then we can see the
+Park!"
+
+Bewildered, dirty, tired, she stumbled along at his side, her eyes
+moving rapidly over the strange crowds, the strange buildings, the
+strange streets and crossings. That must be an elevated train banging
+along; here was a park, with men packed on the benches, and newspapers
+blowing lazily on the paths. And shops in all the basements--why had no
+one ever told her that there were shops in all the basements? And a
+placid church facade breaking this array of trimmed windows and crowded
+little enterprises! It was hot: she felt her forehead wet, her clothes
+seemed heavy and sticky, and her head ached dully.
+
+"How'd you like it?" Wallace asked enthusiastically.
+
+"I love it, sweetheart!"
+
+Wallace, frankly embarrassed for money, took her at once to Mrs.
+Curley's big boarding-house in East Seventieth Street, where the
+Cluetts had stayed.
+
+Mabel had told Martie that "Grandma Curley" was a "character." She was
+a plain, shrewd, kindly old woman, who lived in an old brownstone house
+that had been acquired after his death, Martie learned, for a bad debt
+of her husband's making. She liked everybody and believed in nobody;
+smiling a deep, mysterious smile when her table or her management was
+praised. She eyed Martie's fresh beauty appraisingly, immediately
+suspected her condition, was given the young wife's unreserved
+confidence, and, with a few brief pieces of advice, left her new
+boarders entirely to their own devices. Wallace's daring compliments
+fell upon unhearing ears; she would not lower her prices for anybody,
+she said. They could have the big room for eighteen, or the little one
+for fourteen dollars a week.
+
+"Sixteen for the big one! You know you like our looks," said Wallace.
+
+"I'd be losing money on it, Mr. Bannister. You can take it or leave it,
+just as you like."
+
+He was a little daunted by her firmness, but in the end he told Martie
+that eighteen was cheap enough, and as she scattered her belongings
+about, his wife gave a happy assent. It was fun to be married and be
+boarding in New York.
+
+She was too confused, too excited, to eat her dinner. They were both in
+wild spirits; and went out after dinner to take an experimental ride on
+the elevated train. That evening the trunk came, and Martie, feeling
+still in a whirl of new impressions, unpacked in the big bare bedroom;
+as pleased as a child to arrange her belongings in the empty bureau or
+hang them in the shallow closet. She had been looking forward, for five
+hot days, to the pleasure of a bath and a quiet bed. The bath was not
+to be had; neither faucet in the bathroom ran hot; but the bed was
+deliciously comfortable, and Martie tumbled into it with only one
+thought in her head:
+
+"Anyway, whatever happens now--I'm here in New York!"
+
+The first few days of exploration were somewhat affected by the fact
+that Wallace had almost no money; yet they were glorious days, filled
+with laughter and joy. The heat of summer had no terrors for Martie as
+yet, she was all enthusiasm and eagerness. They ate butter cakes and
+baked apples at Child's, they bought fruit and ice cream bricks and
+walked along eating them. All New York was eating, and panting, and
+gasping in the heat. They went to Liberty Island, and climbed the
+statue, and descended into the smothering subway to be rushed to the
+Bronx Zoo.
+
+And swiftly the city claimed Martie's heart and mind and body, swiftly
+she partook of its freedom, of its thousand little pleasures for the
+poor, of its romance and pathos and ugliness and beauty. Even to the
+seasoned New Yorkers she met, she seemed to hold some key to what was
+strange and significant.
+
+Italian women, musing bareheaded and overburdened in the cars, Rabbis
+with their patriarchal beards, slim saleswomen who wore masses of
+marcelled curls and real Irish lace, she watched them all. She drank in
+the music of the Park concerts, she dreamed in the libraries, she
+eagerly caught the first brassy mutter of the thunder storms.
+
+"If five million other people can make a living here, can't we?" she
+amused Wallace by asking with spirit.
+
+"There's something in that!" he assured her.
+
+A day came when Wallace shaved and dressed with unusual care, and went
+to see Dawson. Hovering about him anxiously at his toilet, his wife had
+reminded him bravely that if Dawson failed, there were other managers;
+Dawson was not the only one! The great thing was that he was HERE,
+ready for them.
+
+Dawson, however, did not fail him. Wallace came back buoyantly with the
+contract. He had been less than a week in New York, and look at it!
+Seventy-five dollars a week in a new play. Rehearsals were to start at
+once.
+
+The joy that she had always felt awaited her in New York was Martie's
+now! She told Wallace that she had KNOWN that New York meant success.
+She went to his rehearsals, feeling herself a proud part of the whole
+enterprise, keenly appreciative of the theatre atmosphere. When he went
+away with his company in late August, Martie saw him off cheerfully,
+moved to a smaller room, and began to plan for his return, and for the
+baby. She was in love with life--she wrote Sally.
+
+"You're lucky our climate don't affect you no more than it does,"
+observed Mrs. Curley comfortably. "I suffer considerable from the heat,
+myself; but then, to tell you the honest truth, I'm fleshy."
+
+"I like it!" Martie answered buoyantly. "The thunder storms are
+delicious! Why, at home the gardens are as dry as bones, now, and look
+at Central Park--as green as ever. And I love the hurdy-gurdies and the
+awnings and the elevated trains and the street markets!"
+
+"I like the city," said the old woman, with a New Yorker's approval of
+this view. "My daughter wants me to go down and open a house in Asbury;
+she has a little summer place there, with a garage and all. But I tell
+her there's almost nobody in the house now, and we get a good draf'
+through the rooms. It's not so bad!"
+
+"It's better for me," said the young wife, "because of the uncertainty
+of Mr. Bannister's plans."
+
+"They're all uncertain--men," submitted Mrs. Curley thoughtfully. "That
+is, the nice ones are," she added. "You show me a man whose wife isn't
+always worrying about him and I'll show you a fool!"
+
+"Which was Mr. Curley?" Martie asked, twinkling. For she and his relict
+were the only women in the big boarding-house during the hot months,
+and they had become intimate.
+
+"Curley," said his widow solemnly, "was one of God's own. A better
+father seven children never had, nor a better neighbour any man! He'd
+be at his place in church on a Sunday be the weather what it might, and
+that strong in his opinions that the boys would ask him this and that
+like the priest himself! I'm not saying, mind you, that he wouldn't
+take a drop too much, now and then, and act very harshly when the drink
+was on him, but he'd come out of it like a little child----"
+
+She fell into a reverie, repeating dreamily to herself the words
+"a--little--child----" and Martie, dreaming, too, was silent.
+
+The two women were in one of the cool back bedrooms. For hot still
+blocks all about the houses were just the same; some changed into
+untidy flats, some empty, some with little shops or agencies in their
+basements, and some, like this one, second-class boarding-houses. On
+Second and Third avenues, under the elevated trains, were miles of
+shops; all small shops, crowded upon each other. Every block had its
+two or three saloons, its meat market, its delicacy store, its tiny
+establishments where drygoods and milk and shoes and tobacco and fruit
+and paints and drugs and candies and hats were sold, and the women who
+drifted up and down all morning shopping usually patronized the nearest
+store. In the basements were smaller stores where ice and coal and
+firewood and window-glass and tinware might be had, and along the
+street supplementary carts of fruit and vegetables were usually
+aligned, so that, especially to inexperienced eyes like Martie's, the
+whole presented a delightfully distracting scene.
+
+She accepted the fact that Wallace must come and go as best suited his
+engagements. Her delight in every novel phase of life in the big city
+fired his own enthusiasm, and it was with great satisfaction that he
+observed her growing friendship with Mrs. Curley.
+
+There were four or five men in the boarding-house, but they usually
+disappeared after an early breakfast and did not come back until
+supper, so that the two women had a long, idle day to themselves.
+Henny, the coloured maid, droned and laughed with friends of her own in
+the kitchen. Mrs. Curley, mighty, deep-voiced, with oily, graying hair
+and spotted clothes, spent most of the day in a large chair by the open
+window, and Martie, thinly dressed, wandered about aimlessly. She never
+tired of the old woman's pungent reminiscences, browsing at intervals
+on the old magazines and books that were scattered over the house, even
+going into the kitchen to convulse the appreciative Henny, and make a
+cake or pudding for dinner.
+
+Summer smouldered in the city. The sun seemed to have been shining hot
+and merciless for hours when Martie rose at six, to stand yawning at
+her window. At nine families began to stream by, to the Park;
+perspiring mothers pushing the baby carriages, small children, already
+eating, staggering before and behind. By ten the streets were deserted,
+baked, silent, glaring. Martie and Mrs. Curley would establish
+themselves in a cool back room, as to-day, with a pitcher of iced tea
+near at hand.
+
+Somehow the hot, empty hours dragged by. At four o'clock the two, with
+perhaps a friend or two who had come in, would begin to gasp that this
+was the worst yet. This was awful. The heat had a positive and brassy
+quality, there was no air stirring. The children in the Park would drag
+home in the hot sunset light, tired, dirty, whining, and a breathless
+evening follow the burning day. Then Martie and Mrs. Curley and mild
+little Mr. Bull and bellicose Mr. Snow would perhaps sit on the steps
+until eleven o'clock, exchanging pleasantries with various neighbours,
+wilted like themselves in the furnace of the day.
+
+Martie liked the sense of extremes, as they all did. In a few months
+they would be shaking their heads over a blizzard with the same solemn
+enjoyment. She liked the suddenly darkening sky, the ominous rattle of
+thunder; "like boxes being smashed," she wrote Sally. She fairly sang
+when the rain began to stream down, washing, cooling, cleansing.
+
+From the window of the back bedroom she looked down to-day upon a
+stretch of bare, fenced backyards. Here and there a cat slept in the
+shade, or moved silently from shadow to shadow. From some of the
+opposite windows strings of washed garments depended, and upon one
+fire-escape two girls were curled, talking and reading.
+
+Her hostess was the source of much affectionate amusement to Martie,
+and as the old lady liked nothing so much as an appreciative listener,
+they got on splendidly. Martie laughed at the older woman's accounts of
+quarrels, births, and law-suits, thrilled over the details of sudden
+deaths, murders, and mysteries, and drank in with a genuine dramatic
+appreciation the vision of a younger, simpler city. No subway, no
+telephones, no motor cars, no elevated roads--what had New York been
+like when Mrs. Curley was a bride? Booth and Parepa Rosa and Adelina
+Patti walked the boards again; the terrible Civil War was fought; the
+draft riots raged in the streets; the great President was murdered.
+There was no old family in the city of whose antecedents Mrs. Curley
+did not know something. "The airs of them!" she would say, musing over
+a newspaper list of "among those present." "I could tell them
+something!"
+
+Martie did not understand how any woman could really be content with
+this dark old house, this business, these empty days, but she realized
+that Mrs. Curley was free to adopt some other mode of living had she
+pleased. Gradually Martie pieced the old woman's history together;
+there had been plenty of change, prosperity, and excitement in her
+life. She had had seven children, only three of whom were living: Mary,
+a prosperous, big matron whose husband, Joe Cunningham, had some
+exalted position on the Brooklyn police force; Ralph, who was a priest
+in California; and George, the youngest, a handsome ne'er-do-well of
+about twenty-five, who was a "heart scald." George floated about his
+own and neighbouring cities, only coming to see his mother when no
+other refuge offered.
+
+The four children who had died were quite as much in their mother's
+thoughts and conversation, and probably more in her prayers, than the
+living ones. Of "Curley," too, Martie heard much. She was able to
+picture a cheerful, noisy home, full of shouting, dark, untidy-headed
+children, with an untidy-headed servant, a scatter-brained mother, and
+an unexacting father in charge. "Curley" usually went to sleep on the
+sofa after dinner, and Mrs. Curley's sister, Mrs. Royce, with her
+children, or her sister-in-law, "Mrs. Dan," with hers, came over to
+pick up the Curleys on the way to a Mission sermon, a church concert,
+or a meeting of the Women's Auxiliary of the Saint Vincent de Paul.
+
+"... Or else maybe the priest would step in," said Mrs. Curley,
+remembering these stirring days, "or often I'd take Mollie or
+Katie--God rest her!--and go over to see the Sisters. But many a night
+there'd be sickness in the house--Curley had two cousins and an aunt
+that died on us--and then I'd be there sitting up with the medicines,
+and talking with this one and that. I was never one to run away from
+sickness, nor death either for that matter. I'm a great hand with death
+in the house; there's no sole to my foot when I'm needed! I'll never
+forget the day that I went over to poor Aggie Lemmon's house--she was a
+lovely woman who lived round the corner from me. Well, I hadn't been
+thinking she looked very well for several weeks, do you see?--and I
+passed the remark to my brother Thomas's wife--God rest her----"
+
+A reminiscence would follow. Martie never tired of them. Whether she
+was held, just now, in the peaceful, unquestioning mood that precedes a
+serious strain on mind and body, or whether her old hostess really had
+had an unusually interesting experience, she did not then or ever
+decide. She only knew that she liked to sit playing solitaire in the
+hot evenings, under a restricted cone of light, with Mrs. Curley
+sitting in the darkness by the window, watching the lively street,
+fanning herself comfortably, and pouring forth the history of the time
+Curley gave poor Ralph a "crule" beating, or of the day Alicia Curley
+died in convulsions at the age of three.
+
+Martie had hoped to be in her own little home when the baby came, but
+this was swiftly proven impossible. Wallace's play failed after the
+wonderful salary had been paid for only eight weeks. He idled about
+with his wife for a few happy weeks, and then got another engagement
+with a small comic opera troupe, and philosophically and confidently
+went on the road. Presently he was home again and in funds, but this
+time it was only a few days before the next parting.
+
+The golden Indian Summer came, and the city blazed in glorious colour.
+Homecoming began; the big houses on the Avenue were opened. Martie
+never saw the burning leaves of September in later years without a
+memory of the poignant uneasiness with which she first had walked
+beneath them, worrying about money, about Wallace's prospects, about
+herself and her child. Many of her walks were filled with imaginary
+conversations with her husband, in which she argued, protested,
+reproached. She was lonely, she was still strange to the city, and she
+was approaching her ordeal.
+
+Even when he was with her, she missed the old loverlike attitude. She
+was wistful, gentle, dependent now, and she knew her wistfulness and
+gentleness and dependence vaguely irritated. But she could not help it;
+she wanted to touch him, to cling to him, to have him praise and
+encourage her, and tell her how much he loved her.
+
+Her hour came near, and she went bravely to meet it. Wallace was in
+Baltimore, playing juvenile roles in a stock company. Martie went alone
+to the big hospital, and put herself into the hands of a capable but
+indifferent young nurse, who candidly explained that she had more
+patients than she could care for without the newcomer. Martie,
+frightened by the businesslike preparations and the clean,
+ether-scented rooms, submitted and obeyed with a sick heart. Through
+the dull quiet of a dark November day the first snow of the season, the
+first Martie had ever seen, began to flutter. Moving restlessly about
+her little room, she stopped at the window to look out upon it through
+a haze of pain.
+
+Heat and hot lights, strange halls, a strange doctor, and early evening
+in a great operating-room; she had only a dazed impression of them all.
+Life roared and crackled about her. She leaped into the offered
+oblivion with no thought of what it might entail....
+
+After a long while she awakened, in a peaceful dawning, to hear nurses
+cheerfully chatting, and the boy warmly fussing and grunting in his
+basket. The little room was flooded with sunlight, sunlight bright on a
+snowy world, and the young women who had been so casually indifferent
+to another woman's agony were proudly awake to the charms of the baby.
+The cocoon was lifted; Martie in a tremor of love and tenderness looked
+down at the scowling, wrinkled little face.
+
+Instantly terror for his safety, for his health, for his immortal soul
+possessed her. She looked uneasily at Miss Everett, when that nurse
+bore him away. Did the woman realize what motherhood MEANT? Did she
+dream the value of that flannel bundle she was so jauntily carrying?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+Rain was falling in such sweeping sheets that the windows actually
+shook under the onslaught; all day long a high wind had raged about the
+house. Above the noise of the November storm in the warm basement
+bedroom rose the steady click and purr of the sewing-machine and the
+chattering of a child's voice, and from outside, on the pavement, was a
+furious rushing of coal. The big van had been backed up against the
+curb, and the cascading black torrent interrupted the passers-by.
+
+"Heavens! Was there ever such an uproar!" exclaimed Martie, ceasing her
+operations at the machine and leaning back in her chair with a long
+sigh. The lengths of flimsy white curtaining she had been hemming
+slipped to the floor; she put her hands behind her head, and yawned
+luxuriously. The room was close, and even at four o'clock there was
+need of lights; its other occupants were only two, the child who played
+with the small gray and red stone blocks upon the floor, and the old
+woman who was peering through her glasses at the curtaining that lay
+across her lap, and manipulating it with knotted hands. Mrs. Curley was
+"Nana" to little Teddy Bannister now, and this shabby room overlooking
+a cemented area, and with its windows safeguarded by curved ornamental
+iron bars from attack from the street, would be his first memory of
+life.
+
+But it was a comfortable room; once the dining room, it had been
+changed and papered and carpeted for its present tenants when Martie,
+as housekeeper of the boarding-house, had decided to move the dining
+room into the big, useless rear parlour upstairs. She and Teddy had
+privacy here; they had plenty of room, and the feet that crisped by on
+the sidewalk, the noises from the kitchen behind her, and the squeaking
+of rats about the basement entrance at night annoyed her not at all.
+She had her own telephone here, her own fireplace, and she was
+comfortably accessible for the maids--there were two maids now--for the
+butcher and ice-man. Between her and the kitchen was a small dark
+space, named by herself the "Cold Lairs," where she had a wash-stand
+and a small bath-tub. A bead of gas burned here night and day, but if
+Teddy ever became REALLY naughty he was to be placed in here as
+punishment and the gas turned out entirely. Teddy had never deserved
+this terrible fate, but he did not like the Cold Lairs, where his
+little crash wash-rag and his tiny toothbrush glimmered at him in the
+half-light, and where he always smelled the raw smell of the lemon his
+mother kept to whiten her hands.
+
+He idolized his mother; they had a separate game for every hour and
+every undertaking of his happy day. He climbed out of his crib, in his
+little faded blue pajamas, for uproarious tumbling and pillow-fighting
+every morning. Then it was seven o'clock, and she told him a story
+while she dressed, and recited poems and answered his questions. There
+was a game about getting all the tangles out of his hair, the father
+and mother tangles, and the various children, and even the dog and cat.
+Then for months it was a game to have her go on washing Teddy's face as
+long as he cried, and stop short when he stopped, so that after a while
+he did not cry at all. But by that time he could spell "Hot" and "Cold"
+from the faucets, and could clean out the wash-stand with great soaping
+and scrubbing all by himself.
+
+Then he and Mother went into the big dark kitchen, where Henny and
+Aurora were yawning over the boarders' breakfasts, Henny perhaps
+cutting out flat little biscuit, and Aurora spooning out prunes from a
+big stone jar with her slender brown thumb getting covered with juice.
+His mother stirred the oatmeal, and, if it were summer, sometimes
+quickly and suspiciously tasted the milk that was going into all the
+little pitchers. Then they went upstairs.
+
+The boarders had their meals at little separate tables now, and the
+"family," which was Mother and Nana, and Aunt Adele and Uncle John,
+were together at the largest table at the back where the serving and
+carving were done, and where the big shiny percolator stood. Teddy knew
+all the boarders--old Colonel and Mrs. Fox from the big upstairs
+bedroom, and Miss Peet and her sister, the school-teachers, from the
+hall-room on that floor, and the Winchells, mother and daughter and
+son, in the two front rooms on the third floor, and the two clerks in
+the back room. Uncle John and Aunt Adele had the pleasant big back room
+on the middle floor, and Nana existed darkly in the small room that
+finished that floor. The persons who filled his world, if they went
+away to the country at all in summer, went only for a fortnight, and
+this gave Mother only the time she needed to have their blankets washed
+and their rooms papered and the woodwork cleaned before their return.
+
+Of them all, of course he liked Uncle John and Aunt Adele best, as
+Mother did. He had seen Aunt Adele kiss his mother, and often she and
+Uncle John would get into such gales of laughter at dinner that even
+Nana, even Teddy, in his high-chair, would laugh violently in sympathy.
+All the boarders were kind to Teddy, but Uncle John was much more than
+kind. He brought Teddy toys from Broadway, sombreros and moccasins and
+pails. He was never too tired when he came home at night to take Teddy
+into his lap, and murmur long tales of giants and fairies. And on long,
+wet Sundays he had been known to propose trips to the Zoo and the
+Aquarium.
+
+Flanking his own picture on his mother's bureau was a photograph of a
+magnificent person in velvet knickerbockers and a frilled shirt with a
+cocked hat under his arm. This was Daddy, Teddy's mother told him; he
+must remember Daddy! But Teddy could not remember him.
+
+"Darling--don't you remember Muddy taking you down to a train, and
+don't you remember the big man that carried you and bought you a
+sand-machine?"
+
+"Where is my sand-machine, Moth'?" the little boy would demand
+interestedly.
+
+"But Teddy, my heart, you were a big boy then, you were long past two.
+CAN'T you remember?"
+
+No use. When Wallace came back he must make the acquaintance of his son
+all over again. Martie would sigh, half-vexed, half-amused.
+
+"Aren't they the queer little things, Adele? He remembers his
+sand-machine and doesn't remember his father!"
+
+"Oh, I don't know, Martie. That was just after we came, you know. And I
+remember thinking that Teddy was a mere baby then!"
+
+"Well, Wallace may be back any day now." Martie always sighed deeply
+over the courageous phrase. Wallace had followed a devious course in
+these years of the child's babyhood. Short engagements, failures, weeks
+on the road, some work in stock companies in the lesser cities--it was
+a curious history. He had seen his wife at long intervals, sometimes
+with a little money, once or twice really prosperous and hopeful,
+once--a dreadful memory--discouraged and idle and drinking. This was
+the last time but one, more than a year ago. Then had come the visit
+when she had met him, and he had given Teddy the sand toy. Martie had
+clung to her husband then; he had not looked well; he would never make
+anything of this wretched profession, she had pleaded. She was doing
+well at the boarding-house; he could stay there while he looked about
+him for regular work.
+
+But Wallace was "working up" a new part, and it was going to be a great
+hit, he said. Every one was crazy about it. He would not go to the
+boardinghouse; he said that his wife's work there was the "limit." For
+his three days in town he lived with a fellow-actor at a downtown
+hotel, and Martie had a curious sense that he did not belong to her at
+all. There was about him the heavy aspect and manner of a man who has
+been drinking, but he told her that he was "all to the wagon." His
+associate, a heavy, square-jawed man with a dramatic manner, praised
+Wallace's professional and personal character highly. Martie, deeply
+distressed, saw him go away to try the new play and went back to her
+own life.
+
+This was in a bitter January. Now Teddy, building houses on the floor,
+had passed his third enchanting birthday, and winter was upon the big
+city again. Martie awaited it philosophically. Her coal was in, anyway,
+or would be in, in another hour, and if the coal-drivers' strike came
+to pass she might sleep in the comfortable consciousness that no one
+under her roof would suffer. Her clean curtains would go up this week;
+it had been an endless job; it was finished.
+
+"And the next thing on the programme is Thanksgiving!" she said between
+two yawns.
+
+"Most of them goes out for that," said Mrs. Curley. "But the Colonel
+and her will stay. Nice to be them that never had to ask the price of
+turkey-meat this ten years!"
+
+"Oh, well--we don't have it but twice a year!" Martie was folding the
+new curtains; presently she gave the neat pile a brisk, condensing slap
+with the flat of her hand. "There now, look what your smart Nana and
+Mother did, Ted!" she boasted. "And come here and give hims mother
+seventeen kisses and hugs, you darling, adorable, fat, soft, little old
+monkey!" The last words were smothered in the fine, silky strands under
+Teddy's dark, thick mop, on his soft little neck. He submitted to the
+tumbling and hugging, trying meanwhile to keep one eye upon the ship he
+had been building from an upturned chair.
+
+Breathless, Martie looked up from the embrace to see a pretty smiling
+woman standing in the doorway, a wet raincoat over one arm, and a wet
+hat balanced on her hand.
+
+"Hello, people!" said the newcomer. "I'm drenched. I don't believe this
+can keep up, it's frightful."
+
+"Hello, Adele!" Martie said, setting Teddy on his feet. "Come in, and
+spread those things on the heater. Sit there where your skirts will get
+the heat. How was the matinee?"
+
+"It was killing," said Mrs. Dryden, establishing herself comfortably by
+the radiator. She was a slender, bright-eyed woman of perhaps thirty,
+whose colouring ran to cool browns: clear brown eyes, brown hair
+prettily dressed, a pale brown skin under which a trace of red only
+occasionally appeared. To-day her tailor-made suit was brown, and about
+her throat was a narrow boa of some brown fur. "Here, Teddy, take these
+to your mother," she added, extending a crushed box half full of
+chocolates. "The place was PACKED," she went on, crunching. "And, my
+dear!--coming out we were right CLOSE to Doris Beresford, in the most
+divine coat I ever laid eyes on! I suppose they all like to have an
+idea of what's going on at the other theatres. I don't believe she uses
+one bit of make-up; wonderful skin! There was such a mob in the car it
+was something terrible. A man crushed up against Ethel; she said she
+thought he'd break her arm! I got a seat; I don't know how it is, but I
+always do. We'd been running, and I suppose my colour was high, and a
+man got up IMMEDIATELY. Nice--I always thank them. I think that's the
+least you can do. Ethel said he sat and stared at me all the way up to
+Fifty-ninth, where he got off. He was an awfully nice-looking fellow;
+I'll tell you what he looked like: a young doctor. Don't you know those
+awfully CLEAN-looking men----"
+
+Martie, now changing Teddy's little suit for dinner, let the stream run
+on unchecked. Mrs. Curley, who did not particularly fancy Mrs. Dryden,
+had gone upstairs, but Martie really liked to listen to Adele.
+Presently she turned on the lights, and led Teddy into the Cold Lairs,
+to have his face washed. Adele reached for the evening paper, and began
+to peruse it idly. When Martie came out of the bath-room, it was to
+hear a knock at the door.
+
+"It's John!" predicted Adele. A moment later her husband came into the
+room. Like his wife, he was cold and wet and rosy from the street, but
+he had evidently been upstairs, for he wore his old house-coat and dry
+slippers, and had brushed his hair. He was younger than Adele by three
+or four years, but he looked like a boy of twenty; squarely built, not
+tall, but giving an impression of physical power nevertheless. Martie
+had first thought his face odd, then interesting; now she found it
+strangely attractive. His eyes, between sandy lashes and under thick
+sandy brows, were of a sea-blue in colour, his head was covered with a
+cap of thick, lustreless, sand-coloured hair. Something odd, elfin,
+whimsical, in his crooked smile lent an actual charm to his face, for
+Martie at least. She told him he looked like Pan.
+
+Early in their acquaintance she had asked him if he were not a Dane,
+not a Norwegian, if he had not viking blood? She said that he suggested
+sagas and berserkers and fjords--"not that I am sure what any of those
+words mean!" His answering laugh had been as wild as a delighted
+child's. No; he was American-born, of an English father and an Irish
+mother, he said. He had never been abroad, never been to college, never
+had any family that he remembered, except Adele. He had meant to be a
+"merchant sailor"--a term he seemed to like, although it conveyed only
+a vague impression to Martie--but his lungs hadn't been strong. So he
+went to Arizona and loafed. And there he met Adele; her mother kept the
+boarding-house in which he lived, in fact, and there they were married.
+Adele had a glorious voice and she wanted to come to New York to
+cultivate it. And then Adele had been ill.
+
+His voice fell reverently when he spoke of this illness. Adele had
+nearly died. What the hope that had also really died at this time meant
+to him, Martie could only suspect when she saw him with Teddy. Adele
+herself told her that she was never strong enough for new hopes.
+
+"We couldn't afford it, of course; so perhaps it was just as well,"
+said Adele one day when she and Martie had come to be good friends, and
+were confidential. "I felt terribly for a while, because I have a
+wonderful way with children; I know that myself. They always come to
+me--funniest thing! Dr. Poole was saying the other day that I had a
+remarkable magnetism. I said, 'I don't know about THAT,'--and I don't,
+Martie! I don't think I'm so magnetic, do you--'BUT,' I said, 'I really
+do seem to have a hold on children!' Jack loves children, too, but he
+spoils them. I don't believe in letting children run a house; it isn't
+good for them, and it isn't good for you. Let them have their own toys
+and treat them as kindly as possible, but----"
+
+John Dryden was a salesman in a furniture house; perhaps the city's
+finest furniture house. Martie suspected that his pleasant, half-shy,
+yet definite manner, made him an excellent salesman. He talked to her
+about his associates, whom he took upon their own valuations, and
+deeply admired. This one was a "wizard" at figures, and that one had "a
+deuce of a manner with women." John chuckled over their achievements,
+but she knew that he himself must be the secret wonder of the place. He
+might be more or less, but he was certainly not a typical furniture
+salesman. Sometimes the manager took him to lunch; Martie wondered if
+he quoted the queer books he read, and made the staid echoes of the
+club to which they went awake to his pagan laughter.
+
+His extraordinarily happy temperament knew sudden despairs, but they
+were usually because he had made a "rotten mistake," or because he was
+"such a fool" about something. He never complained of the stupid daily
+round; perhaps it was not stupid to him, who always had a book under
+his arm, and to whom the first snow and the first green leaves were
+miracles of delight every year. He treated Adele exactly as if she had
+been an engaging five-year-old, and she had charming childish
+mannerisms for him alone. He pacified her when she fretted and
+complained, and was eagerly grateful when her mood was serene. Her
+prettiness and her little spoiled airs, Martie realized surprisedly,
+were full of appeal for him.
+
+"You don't mean that--you don't mean that!" he would say to her when
+she sputtered and raged. He listened absently to her long dissertation
+upon the persons--and for Adele the world was full of them--who tried
+to cheat her, or who were insolent to her, and to whom she was
+triumphantly insolent in return. She found Martie much more sympathetic
+as a listener.
+
+Toward Martie, too, John soon began to display a peculiar
+sensitiveness. At first it was merely that she spurred his sense of
+humour; he began to test the day's events by her laughter. After that
+her more general opinions impressed him; he watched her at dinner and
+accepted eagerly her verdict upon political affairs or the books and
+plays of the hour. She noticed, and was a little touched to notice,
+that he quoted her weeks after she had expressed herself. He brought
+her books and they disagreed and argued about them. In summer, with
+Adele languid under her parasol, and Teddy enchanting in white, they
+went to the park concerts, or to the various museums, and wrangled
+about the new Strauss and Debussy, and commented upon the Hals canvases
+and the art of Meissonier and Detaille.
+
+This evening he had a book for her from the Public Library; he had been
+dipping into it on the elevated train.
+
+"Which ticket is this on, John?"
+
+"Yours."
+
+"Well, then, you paid my dues on the other! How much?"
+
+"Six cents."
+
+She showed him the six coppers on her white palm.
+
+"You were an angel to do it. Listen; do you want to read this when I'm
+through?"
+
+"Well, if you think so."
+
+"Think so?--Carlyle's 'Revolution'? Of course you ought to! Adele,
+isn't he ignorant?"
+
+"I read that in High School," smiled Adele. "It's awfully good."
+
+"Mis' Ban'ster," Aurora was at the door, "Hainy was cuttin' open the
+chickens f' t'morrer, and she says one of 'em give an awful queer sort
+of POP--!"
+
+"Oh, for Heaven's sake!" Martie started kitchenward. John Dryden gave a
+laugh of purest joy; Aurora was one of his delights. "We always say
+we're going to read aloud in the evenings," she called back. "Now
+here's a chance--a wet evening, and Adele and I with oceans of sewing!"
+
+She went from the kitchen upstairs, finding the various boarders
+quietly congregating in the hall and parlour, awaiting the opening of
+the dining-room door. Adele had gone up to her room, but Teddy and John
+were roaming about. Rain still slashed and swished out of doors. The
+winter was upon them.
+
+"Seems to be such a smell of PAINT," said the younger Miss Peet.
+
+"Well, that's just trying out the radiators," Martie said hearteningly.
+"It won't last. Did you get caught?"
+
+"Sister did; I got home just before it started. It seems to me we're
+having rain early this year--"
+
+"We had had two inches at this time last year," said old Colonel Fox.
+Martie knew that this unpromising avenue would lead him immediately to
+Chickamauga; she slipped into the dining room and began to carve.
+Aurora was rushing about with butter-plates, her cousin Lyola, engaged
+merely for the dinner-hour, was filling glasses. A moment later the
+entire household assembled for the meal. Mrs. Fox, a gentle, bony old
+lady, with clean, cool hands, and with a dowdy little yoke of good lace
+in the neck of her old silk, smiled about her sadly. Mrs. Winchell was
+a plump little woman who always burst out laughing as a preliminary to
+speech. Her daughter was eye-glassed, pretty, capable, a woman who
+realized perfectly, at twenty-six, that she had no charm whatever for
+men. She realized, too, that Mrs. Bannister, with her bronze hair and
+quick speech, was full of it, and envied the younger woman in a
+bloodless sort of way. Her brother, known as "Win," had already had a
+definite repulse from Mrs. Bannister, and nothing was too bad for the
+snubbed suitor to intimate about her in consequence. Win had never seen
+"this husband of hers"; Win thought she looked "a little gay, all
+right." He had a much more successful friendship with Adele, who
+slapped his hand and told him he was the "limit."
+
+To-night one of the clerks from the top floor, shaking out his napkin,
+called gaily to Mrs. Bannister that this was his birthday. It was
+characteristic of her kindly relationship that she came immediately to
+his table. Now why hadn't he told her yesterday? He should have had a
+cake, and chicken-pie, because he had once said chicken was his
+favourite "insect." He was twenty-eight? He seemed such a boy!
+
+She went back to her place, determining that she would set out a little
+supper of cake and crackers and cheese for him to find when his
+room-mate and he came in tired and wet from their theatre that night.
+She looked at Teddy; would he keep a birthday in a boarding-house some
+day with only the housekeeper to mother him?
+
+"We're betting that you're younger than I am, Mrs. Bannister!"
+
+"You win." She smiled at him frankly. "I'm not yet twenty-four!" Martie
+was conscious of a little pang as she met his surprised almost pitying
+look.
+
+"I think that talk about ages was just a little undignified," said Edna
+Winchell later that night.
+
+"Yes, I do, too!" her mother answered quickly.
+
+"There's something about that girl we don't understand, you bet,"
+contributed the son. "When I went down for a match she was just getting
+a special delivery letter, and she looked as if she was going to drop.
+You mark my words--it had something to do with that mysterious husband
+of hers!"
+
+For the boarding-house had never seen Wallace, who held the whole place
+in bitter scorn. He resented the fact of Martie's position there; the
+fact of her having made herself useful to old Mrs. Curley represented a
+difference in their point of view. When, in Teddy's first year, regular
+letters and a regular remittance from Wallace ceased to appear, Martie
+had gone through an absolute agony of worry. Her husband was then on
+the road, and she was not even sure that her letters reached him.
+
+Alone except for the baby, in the freezing, silent cold of the city,
+she had pondered, planned, and fretted for day after weary day. The one
+or two acquaintances she had made in Wallace's profession would have
+advised her not to worry, nobody ever was turned out for board in these
+days. But Martie was too proud to appeal to them for counsel, and for
+other but even stronger reasons she could not confide in Mrs. Curley.
+So passed the first Christmas alone, doubly sad because it reminded her
+of the Christmas a year before, when they had been so happy and so
+prosperous in San Francisco.
+
+In snowy February, however, Mrs. Curley herself had unconsciously
+offered a solution. She wanted to go to her daughter in Brooklyn for a
+fortnight. "Run the house for me, that's the good girl," she said to
+Martie. "You can do it as good as I can, any day of the world! Aurora
+knows what the menus for the week are and all you've got to do is to do
+the ordering and show the rooms to folks that come looking for them."
+
+Martie had been feeling a little more comfortable about her overdue
+board, because Wallace, playing in stock in Los Angeles, had sent her
+one hundred dollars early in the year. It was not enough, but it
+sufficed to pay a comfortable installment on her bill, and to keep her
+in money for another week or two. But she was sick of waiting and
+worrying, and she seized the opportunity to be helpful. Chance favoured
+her, for during the old woman's visit the daughter in Brooklyn fell
+ill, and it was mid-March before the mother came home again. By that
+time the trembling Martie had weathered several storms, had rented the
+long-vacant front room, and was more brisk and happy than she had been
+for months, than she had ever been perhaps. So the arrangement drifted
+along. There was no talk of a salary then, but in time Martie came to
+ask for such money as she needed--for Teddy's rompers, for gingham
+dresses for summer, for stationery and stamps--and it was always
+generously accorded.
+
+"Get good things while you're about it," Mrs. Curley would say. "You
+buy for the ragman when you buy trash. This lad here," she would
+indicate the splendid Teddy, with his loose dark curls and his creamy
+skin, "he wants to look elegant, so that the girls will run after him!"
+
+Martie felt more free to obey her because the business was in a
+steadily improving condition. This fancy for keeping a few "paying
+guests" had become a sort of expensive luxury for the solitary woman,
+whose children no longer needed her, and who would not live with any of
+them. Mrs. Curley was not entirely dependent upon her boarding-house,
+but she had never been reconciled to the actual loss of money in the
+business. She liked to have other persons about, she having no definite
+interests of her own, and the new arrangement suited her perfectly: an
+attractive young woman to help her, a baby to lend a familiar air to
+the table, and money enough to pay all bills and have something left
+over.
+
+Amazingly, the money flowed in. Martie told them one night at dinner
+that she had always fancied a boarding-house was a place where a
+slap-heeled woman climbed bleak stairs to tell starving geniuses that
+their rent was overdue. Mrs. Curley had laughed comfortably at the
+picture.
+
+"You can always make money feeding people," she had asserted. John had
+given Martie a serious look after his laugh.
+
+"Geniuses don't HAVE to starve," he had submitted thoughtfully.
+
+"There's always plenty of work in the world, if people will do it!"
+Adele had added. "Dear me, I often wonder if the people who talk
+charity--charity--charity--realize that it's all two thirds laziness
+and dirt. I don't care HOW poor I was, I know that I would keep my
+little house nice; you don't have to have money to do that! But you'll
+always hear this talk of the unemployed--when any employer will tell
+you the hard thing is to get trustworthy men! The other day Ethel was
+asking me to join some society or other--take tickets for an actors'
+benefit, I think it was--and I begged to be excused. I told her we
+didn't have any money to spare for that sort of thing! Genius, indeed!
+Why don't they get jobs?"
+
+"Jobs in a furniture store, eh, John?" Martie smiled. The man answered
+her smile sturdily.
+
+"It isn't so rotten!" he said.
+
+Her letters to-night, for there were two in the special delivery
+stamped envelope, were from Lydia and Sally. Sally had written often to
+her sister during the years, and Martie was fairly in touch with Monroe
+events: the young Hawkeses had three babies now, and Grace had twins.
+Rose had been ill, and had lost her hopes a second time, but she was
+well now, and she and Rodney had been to New York. People said that the
+Parkers were coining money, and Rose had absolutely everything she
+wanted. Colonel Frost was dead. Miss Frost looked like death--Martie
+had smiled at the old phrase--and Grandma Kelly was dead; Father Martin
+was quoted as saying that she was a saint if ever there was one. George
+Patterson had been sued by a girl in Berkeley, and Monroe was of the
+opinion that the Pattersons never would hold up their heads again. Pa
+and Len were in some real estate venture together, Len had talked Pa
+into it at last. And finally, Sally and the children were well, and Joe
+wrote her every day.
+
+This last sentence had puzzled Martie; where was Joe Hawkes then, that
+he must write every day to his wife? She had intended to write Sally in
+the old affectionate, confidential strain, and ask all the questions
+that rose now and then in her thoughts of Monroe. But she had not
+written for months, and now--now this.
+
+She grasped the news in the tear-stained sheets at a first glance. Her
+mother was dead. Martie repeated the words to herself with a stupid
+realization that she could not grasp their meaning. The old dark house
+in the sunken square would know that slender, gentle presence no more.
+She had never felt the parting final; a chill wind from some forgotten
+country smote her. Her mother was dead, her child was growing up, her
+husband had failed her.
+
+Sally's letter was brief, restrained, and tender. Martie could read
+Sally's development in the motherly lines. But Lydia had written in a
+sort of orgy of grief. Ma had "seemed like herself all Wednesday," and
+had gone with Lydia to see old Mrs. Mussoo, and had eaten her dinner
+that night, and the next day, Thursday, she had come down as usual to
+breakfast, and so on and on for ten long days, every hour of which was
+treasured now in Lydia's heart. "And poor Pa," wrote the older sister,
+"I must be all in all to him now; I never can marry now. And oh,
+Martie, I couldn't help wishing, for your sake, that you could feel
+that you had never, even as a thoughtless girl, caused our dear angel
+an hour of grief and pain! You must say to yourself that she forgave
+you and loved you through it all ..."
+
+Martie made a wry mouth over the letter. But into the small hours of
+the morning she lay awake, thinking of her mother and of the old days.
+Odd little memories came to her: the saucer pies that she and Sally
+used to have for their tea-parties, out under the lilac trees, and a
+day when she, Martie, had been passionately concerned for the fate of a
+sick cat, and had appealed to her mother for help. Mrs. Monroe had been
+filling lamps, and her thin dark hands were oily and streaked with
+soot, but she had been sympathetic about the kitten, and on her advice
+the invalid had been wrapped in a clean cloth, and laid tenderly on the
+heaps of soft, sweet, dying grass that had been raked to one side of
+the lawn. Here kindly death had found the kitten a little later, and
+Martie, cat and all, had climbed into her mother's lap and cried. But
+she was not a little girl any longer--she would never feel her mother's
+arms about her again.
+
+The next day she received a box of roses, not remarkable roses,
+inasmuch as they were rather small, of a solid red, and wired heavily
+from the end of their sterns to the very flower. But the enclosed note
+in which John Dryden said that he knew how hard it was for her, and was
+as sorry as he could be, touched Martie. A far more beautiful gift
+would not have gone to her heart quite so deeply as did this cheap box
+and the damp card with its message smudged and blurred.
+
+Through the long icy winter she began to feel, with a sense of vague
+pain, that life was passing, that if she and Wallace were ever to have
+that big, shadowy studio, that long-awaited time of informal
+hospitality and financial ease, it must come soon. Her marriage was
+already measured by years; yet she was still a child in Wallace's
+hands. He could leave her thus bound and thus free; she was helpless,
+and she began to chafe against the injustice of it. One day she found,
+and rewrote her old article, filled with her own resentful theories of
+a girl's need of commercial fitness. She sent it to a magazine; it was
+almost immediately returned.
+
+But the episode bore fruit, none the less. For, discussing it with
+John, as she discussed everything with John, she was led to accept his
+advice as to the appearance of the closely written sheets. It would
+have a much better chance if it were typewritten, he assured her. He
+carried it off to his stenographer.
+
+This was in April, and as, with characteristic forgetfulness, he failed
+to bring it back, Martie, chancing to pass his office one day,
+determined to go in and get it for herself. She had never been in
+John's place of business before. She went from the spring warmth and
+dazzle of the street into the pleasant dimness of the big store that
+smelled pleasantly of reedy things, wickerwork and carpets.
+
+Three or four salesmen "swam out like trout" from the shadows to meet
+her, she told John presently, evoking one of his bursts of laughter.
+One of them called him, and Martie had a sensation of real affection as
+he came down, his eager, faunlike face one radiant smile. She spoke of
+the manuscript, but he hardly heard her. Where could they talk?--he
+said concernedly. He glanced about; his face brightened.
+
+"I know! There's a set of five rooms just finished by our decorator on
+the fourth floor; we'll go there!"
+
+"But, John--truly I haven't but a minute!" Martie protested.
+
+He did not hear her. He touched the elevator bell, and they went
+upstairs.
+
+The furnished suite was unbelievably lovely to Martie's unaccustomed
+eyes. She wanted to exclaim over the rugs and chairs; John wanted to
+talk. They wandered through the perfect rooms, laughing like happy
+children.
+
+"I came down to get some things for to-morrow--Teddy needs a straw hat,
+if we're really going to Coney"--Martie found his steady look a little
+confusing. "You like my pongee, and my four-dollar hat?" she said.
+
+"I think you're PERFECTLY--GORGEOUS!" he answered intensely. "To have
+you come in here like this!--I had no idea of it! Brewer simply came
+and said 'a lady'--I thought it was that woman from the hotel. I'll
+never forget the instant my eyes fell upon you, standing there by old
+Pitcher. It--honestly, Martie, it seemed to me like a burst of
+sunshine!"
+
+"Why--you goose!" she said, a little shaken. The circumstance of their
+being here, in this exquisite semblance of domestic comfort, the sweet
+summer day, the new flowery hat and cool pongee gown, combined to stir
+her blood. She forgot everything but that she was young, and that it
+was strangely thrilling to have this man, so ardent and so forceful,
+standing close beside her.
+
+It was almost with a sense of relief, a second later, that she realized
+that other groups were drifting through the little apartment, that she
+and John were not alone. She remembered, with a strange, poignant
+contraction of her heart, the expression in his eyes as they met, the
+authoritative finger with which he had touched the elevator bell.
+
+John spoke appreciatively of her visit that night at the table; Adele
+said that Martie had told her of it.
+
+"I was going down town with her," said Adele, playing idly with knife
+and fork. "But I got started on that disgusting centrepiece again, and
+Ethel came in, and we just sewed. I'm so sick of the thing now I told
+Miriam I was going to give it to her and let her finish it
+herself--I'll have to go down town Monday and match the silk anyway;
+it's too maddening, for there's just that one leaf to do, but I might
+as well keep AT it, and get RID of it! If we go to Coney to-morrow I
+believe I'll take it along, and go on with it; I suppose it would look
+funny, but I don't know why not. Ethel went to Coney last week with the
+Youngers in their auto; she said it was a perfect scream all the way;
+Tom WOULD pass everything on the road, and she said it was a scream!
+She says Mrs. Younger talks about herself and her house and her
+servants all the time, and she wouldn't get out of the car, so it
+wasn't much fun. I asked her why she wouldn't get out of the car, and
+she said her complexion. I didn't see anything so remarkable about it
+myself; anyway, if you rub plenty of cream in--I'm going to do that
+to-morrow, Martie, and you ought to!--and then wear a veil, I don't
+mean too heavy a veil, but just to keep your hat tight, why, you don't
+burn!"
+
+"Both you girls come down town Monday, and I'll show you a rug worth
+fifty thousand dollars," suggested John.
+
+"Oh, thank you, dear!" Adele said in bright protest. "But if you knew
+what I've got to do Monday! I'm going to have my linen fitted, and I'm
+going in to see the doctor about that funny, giddy feeling I've had
+twice. And Miriam wants me to look at hats with her. I'll be simply
+dead. Miriam and I will get a bite somewhere; we're dying to try the
+fifty-cent lunch at Shaftner's; they say it isn't so bad. It'll be an
+awful day, to say nothing of being all tired out from Coney. But I
+suppose I'll have to get through it."
+
+She smiled resignedly at Martie. But Martie had fallen suddenly into
+absent thought. She was thinking of the odd look on John's face as he
+came forward in the pleasant dimness and coolness of the big store.
+
+The next day they went duly to Coney Island; their last trip together,
+as it chanced, and one of the most successful of their many days in the
+parks or on the beaches. John, Martie, and Teddy were equally filled
+with childish enthusiasm for the prospect, and perhaps Adele liked as
+well her role of amused elder.
+
+It was part of the pleasure for Martie to get up early, to slip off to
+church in the soft, cool morning. The dreaming city, awaiting the heat
+of the day, was already astir, churchgoers and holiday-makers were at
+every crossing. Freshly washed sidewalks were drying, enormous Sunday
+newspapers and bottles of cream waited in the doorways. Fasting women,
+with contented faces, chatted in the bakery and the dairy, and in the
+push-cart at the curb ice melted under a carpet cover. It was going to
+be a scorcher--said the eager boys and girls, starting off in holiday
+wear, coatless, gloveless, frantic to be away. Little families were
+engineered to the surface cars, clean small boys in scalloped blue wash
+suits, mother straining with the lunch-basket, father carrying the
+white-coated baby and the newspaper and the children's cheap coats.
+
+Martie, kissing Teddy as a preliminary to her delayed breakfast, came
+home to discuss the order of events. The route and the time were
+primarily important: Teddy's bucket, John's camera, her own watch, must
+not be forgotten. There were last words for Henny and Aurora, good-byes
+for Grandma; then they were out in the Sunday streets, and the day was
+before them!
+
+John took charge of the child; Adele and Martie talked and laughed
+together all the long trip. The extraordinary costumes of the boys and
+girls about them, the sights that filled the streets, these and a
+thousand other things were of fresh interest. Adele's costume was
+discussed.
+
+"My gloves washed so beautifully; he said they would, but I didn't
+believe him! My skirt doesn't look a bit too short, does it, Martie? I
+put this old veil on, and then if we have dinner any place decent, I'll
+change to the other. I wore these shoes, because I'll tell you why:
+they only last one summer, anyway, and you might as well get your wear
+out of them. Listen, does any powder show? I simply put it on thick,
+because it does save you so. It's that dead white. I told her I didn't
+have colour enough for it; she said I had a beautiful colour--absurd,
+but I suppose they have to say those things!"
+
+And Adele, her clear brown eyes looking anxiously from her slender
+brown face, leaned toward Martie for inspection. Martie was always
+reassuring. Adele looked lovely; she had her hat on just right.
+
+At Coney Teddy played bare-legged in the warm sand. Adele had a beach
+chair near by. She put on her glasses, and began her sewing; later they
+would all read parts of the paper, changing and exchanging constantly.
+Martie and John, beaming upon all the world, joined the long lines that
+straggled into the bath-houses, got their bundled suits and their gray
+towels, and followed the attendant along the aisles that were echoing
+with the sound of human voices, and running with the water from wet
+bathing-suits. Fifteen minutes later they met again, still beaming, to
+cross under the damp, icy shadow of the boardwalk, and come out, fairly
+dancing with high spirits, upon the long, hot curve of the beach. The
+delicious touch of warm sand under her stockinged feet, the sunlight
+beating upon her glittering hair, Martie would run down the shore to
+the first wheeling shallows of the Atlantic.
+
+"Nothing I have ever done in my life is so wonderful as this!" she
+shouted as the waves caught them, and carried them off their feet. John
+swam well; Martie a little; neither could get enough of the tumbling
+blue water.
+
+Breathless, they presently joined Adele; Martie spreading her
+glittering web of hair to dry, as she sat in the sand by the other
+woman's chair; John stretched in the hot sand for a nap; Teddy
+staggering to and fro with a dripping pail. They liked to keep a little
+away from the crowd; a hundred feet away the footmarked sand was
+littered with newspapers, cigarette-butts, gum-wrappers, and empty
+paper-bags, the drowsing men and women were packed so close that
+laughing girls and boys, going by in their bathing-suits, had to weave
+a curving path up and down the beach.
+
+Presently they had a hearty meal: soft-shell crabs fried brown, with
+lemon and parsley, coffee ready-mixed with milk and sugar, sliced
+tomatoes with raw onions, all served in cheap little bare rooms, at
+scarred little bare tables, a hundred feet from the sea. Later came the
+amusements: railways and flying-swings enjoyed simultaneously with hot
+sausages and ice-cream cones.
+
+Adele liked none of this so much as she liked to go up toward the big
+hotels at about five o'clock, to find a table near the boardwalk, and
+sit twirling her parasol, and watching the people stream by. The
+costumes and the types were tirelessly entertaining. At six they
+ordered sandwiches and beer, and Teddy had milk and toast. The
+uniformed band, coming out into its pagoda, burst into a brassy uproar,
+the sun sank, the tired crowd in its brilliant colours surged slowly to
+and fro. Beyond all, the sea softly came and went, waves broke and
+spread and formed again unendingly.
+
+Martie felt that she would like to sit so forever, with her son's soft,
+relaxed little body in her arms. To-night she did not analyze the new
+emotion that John's glances, John's voice, John's quiet solicitude for
+her comfort, had lent the day. Of course he liked her; of course he
+admired her; that was a fact long recognized with maternal amusement by
+Adele and herself. Of course he laughed at her, but every one laughed
+at Martie when she chose to be humorous. Let it go at that!
+
+Sandy, sore, sleepy, and sunburned, they were presently in the
+returning cars, all wilted New York returning with them. Teddy slept
+soundly, sometimes in his mother's arms, sometimes in John's. It was
+John who carried him up the steps of the Seventieth Street house at ten
+o'clock.
+
+A gentleman waiting to see Mrs. Bannister? Goodness, Aurora, why didn't
+you ask Mrs. Curley to see him? Martie surrendered her loose coat and
+hat to the maid, put a hand to her disordered hair. Apologetic,
+smiling, she went into the parlour.
+
+Wallace Bannister was waiting for her; she was in her husband's arms.
+
+"But, Wallace--Wallace--Wallace, what does it matter, dear? You don't
+have to tell me all about it, all the sickness and failure and bad
+luck! You're home again, now, and you've gotten back into your own
+line, and that's all that matters!"
+
+Thus Martie, laughing with lashes still wet. She understood, she
+forgave; what else was a wife for? All that mattered was that he was
+here, and was deep in new plans, he had a new part to work up, he was
+to begin rehearsing next week, and the past was all a troubled dream.
+Ah, this was worth while; this made up for it all!
+
+Not quite a dream, for he seemed much older; the boyish bravado was
+gone. He was stout, settled, curiously deliberate in manner. But then
+she was older, too.
+
+He answered her generous concession only with compliments. She had
+grown handsome, by George, she had a stunning figure, she had a
+stunning air! Martie laughed; she knew it was true.
+
+He felt his old hatred for her employment at the boarding-house, and
+she was as eager as he to launch into real housekeeping at last. After
+the lonely years, it was wonderful to have a husband again! He bought
+whatever she wanted, took her proudly about. She went with him to his
+first rehearsals, finding the old stage atmosphere strangely
+exhilarating. Adele was frankly jealous of this new development, Martie
+saw and heard her as little as she noticed John's silence and
+seriousness, and Mrs. Curley's dubious cooperation.
+
+A friend of Wallace proposed to sub-let them a furnished apartment in
+East Twenty-sixth Street. Martie inspected it briefly, with eyes too
+dazzled with dreams to see it truly.
+
+She was not trained to business responsibility: she merely laughed
+because her old employer was annoyed to have her housekeeper desert
+her. After all, could there be a better reason for any move than that
+one's husband wished it? Swiftly and gaily she snapped the ties that
+bound her to the boarding-house.
+
+There seemed to be plenty of money for teas and dinners: she stared
+about the brightly lighted restaurants like an excited child. Wallace
+was boisterously fond of his son, but he was too busy to be much with
+Teddy, and he wanted his wife all day and every day. So Martie engaged
+a housekeeper to take her place in the house, and a little coloured
+girl to take care of Teddy, and devoted herself to Wallace.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+The flat in East Twenty-sixth Street was not what Martie's lonely
+dreams had fashioned, but she accepted it with characteristic courage
+and made it a home. She had hoped for something irregular,
+old-fashioned: big rooms, picturesque windows, picturesque
+inconveniences, interesting neighbours.
+
+She found five rooms in a narrow, eight-story, brick apartment-house; a
+narrow parlour with a cherry mantel and green tiles, separated from a
+narrow bedroom by closed folding doors, a narrow, long hall passing a
+dark little bathroom and the tiny dark room that Teddy had, a small
+dining room finished in black wood and red paper, and, wedged against
+it, a strip of kitchen.
+
+These were small quarters after the airy bareness of the Curley home,
+and they were additionally reduced in effect by the peculiar taste
+their first occupant had shown in furnishing. The walls were crowded
+with heavily framed pictures, coloured photographs of children in livid
+pink and yellow gowns dancing to the music played by draped ladies at
+grand pianos; kittens in hats, cheap prints of nude figures, with ugly
+legends underneath. The chairs were of every period ever sacrificed to
+flimsy reproduction: gilt, Mission, Louis XIV, Pembroke, and old
+English oak. There were curtains, tassels, fringes, and portieres
+everywhere, of cotton brocade, velours, stencilled burlap, and "art"
+materials generally. There was a Turkish corner, with a canopy,
+daggers, crescents, and cushions. The bookcase in the parlour and the
+china cabinet in the dining room were locked. The latter was so large,
+and the room it adorned so small, that it stood at an angle, partly
+shutting out the light of the one window. Every room except the parlour
+opened upon an air-well, spoken of by the agent as "the court." The
+rent was fifty dollars, and Wallace considered the place a bargain.
+
+For the first day or two Martie laughed bravely at her surroundings,
+finding in this vase or that picture cause for great amusement. She
+promised herself that she would store some of these horrors, but
+inasmuch as there was not a spare inch in the flat for storage, it was
+decidedly simplest to leave them where they were. Wallace did not mind
+them, and Wallace's happiness was her aim in life.
+
+But, strangely, after the first excitement of his return was over, a
+cool distaste descended upon her. Before the first weeks of the new
+life were over, she found herself watching her husband with almost
+hostile eyes. It must be wrong for a wife to feel so abysmal--so
+overwhelming an indifference toward the man whose name she bore.
+Wallace, weary with the moving, his collar off, his thick neck bare,
+his big pale face streaked with drying perspiration, was her husband
+after all. She was angry at herself for noticing that his sleek hair
+was thinning, that the old look of something not fine was stamped more
+deeply upon his face. She resolutely suppressed the deepening
+resentment that grew under his kisses; kisses scented with alcohol.
+
+Generations of unquestioning wives behind her, she sternly routed the
+unbidden doubts, she deliberately put from her thoughts many another
+disillusion as the days went by. She was a married woman now, protected
+and busy; she must not dream like a romantic girl. There was
+delightfully novel cooking to do; there was freedom from hateful
+business responsibility. All beginnings were hard, she told her
+shrinking soul; she was herself changed by the years; what wonder that
+Wallace was changed?
+
+Perhaps in his case it was less change than the logical development of
+qualities that would have been distinctly discernible to clearer eyes
+than hers in the very hour of their meeting. Wallace had always drifted
+with the current, as he was drifting now. He would have been as glad as
+she, had success come instead of failure; he did not even now
+habitually neglect his work, nor habitually drink. It was merely that
+his engagement was much less distinguished than he had told her it was,
+his part was smaller, his pay smaller, and his chances of promotion
+lessening with every year. He had never been a student of life, nor
+interested in anything that did not touch his own comfort; but in the
+first days of their love, days of youth and success and plenty, Martie
+had been as frankly an egotist as he. His heaviness, his lack of
+interest in what excited her, his general unresponsiveness, came to her
+now more as a recollection than a surprise.
+
+The farce in which he had a part really did prove fairly successful,
+and his salary was steady and his hours comfortable until after the new
+year. Then the run ended, and Wallace drifted for three or four weeks
+that were full of deep anxiety for Martie.
+
+When he was engaged again, in a vaudeville sketch that was booked for a
+few weeks on one of the smaller circuits about New York, she had some
+difficulty in making him attend rehearsals, and take his part
+seriously. His friends were generally of the opinion that it was
+beneath his art. His wife urged that "it might lead to something."
+
+Wallace was amused at her concern. Actors never worked the whole year
+round, he assured her. There was nothing doing in the summertime, ever.
+Martie remarked, with a half-sorry laugh, that a salary of one hundred
+dollars a week for ten weeks was less than eighty-five dollars a month,
+and the same salary, if drawn for only five weeks, came to something
+less than a living income.
+
+"Don't worry!" Wallace said.
+
+"Wallace, it's not for myself. It's for the--the children. My dear! If
+it wasn't for that, it would be a perfect delight to me to take luck
+just as it came, go to Texas or Canada with you, work up parts myself!"
+she would answer eagerly. She wanted to be a good wife to him, to give
+him just what all men wanted in their wives. But under all her bravery
+lurked a sick sense of defeat. He never knew how often he failed her.
+
+And he was older. He was not far from forty, and his youth was gone. He
+did not care for the little dishes Martie so happily prepared, the
+salads and muffins, the eggs "en cocotte" and "suzette." He wanted
+thick broiled steak, and fried potatoes, and coffee, and nothing else.
+He slept late in the mornings, coming out frowsy-headed in undershirt
+and trousers to breakfast at ten or eleven, reading the paper while he
+ate, and scenting the room with thick cigar smoke.
+
+Martie waited on him, interrupting his reading with her chatter. She
+would sit opposite him, watching the ham and eggs vanish, and the
+coffee go in deep, appreciative gulps.
+
+"How d'you feel, Wallie?"
+
+"Oh, rotten. My head is the limit!"
+
+"Too bad! More coffee?"
+
+"Nope. Was that the kid banging this morning?"
+
+"My dear, he was doing it just for the time it took me to snatch the
+hammer away! I was so sorry!"
+
+"Oh, that's all right." He would yawn. "Lord, I feel rotten!"
+
+"Isn't it perhaps--drinking and smoking so much, Wallace?" Martie might
+venture timidly.
+
+"That has nothing to do with it!"
+
+"But, Wallie, how do you know it hasn't?"
+
+"Because I do know it!"
+
+He would return to his paper, and Martie to her own thoughts. She would
+yawn stupidly, when he yawned, in the warm, close air. Sometimes she
+went into the tumbled bedrooms and put them in order, gathering up
+towels and scattered garments. But usually Wallace did not bathe until
+after his breakfast, and nothing could be done until that was over.
+Equally, Martie's affairs kitchenward were delayed; sometimes Wallace's
+rolls were still warming in the oven when she put in Teddy's luncheon
+potato to bake. The groceries ordered by telephone would arrive, and be
+piled over the unwashed dishes on the table, the frying pan burned dry
+over and over again.
+
+After Teddy and his mother had lunched, if Wallace was free, they all
+went out together. He was devoted to the boy, and broke ruthlessly into
+his little schedule of hours and meals for his own amusement. Or he and
+Martie went alone to a matinee. But when he was playing in vaudeville,
+even if he lived at home, he must be at the theatre at four and at
+nine. Often on Sunday afternoons he went out to meet his friends, to
+drift about the theatrical clubs and hotels, and dine away from home.
+
+Then Martie would take Teddy out, happy times for both. They went to
+the library, to the museums, to the aquarium and the Zoo. Martie came
+to love the second-hand book-stores, where she could get George Eliot's
+novels for ten cents each, a complete Shakespeare for twenty-five. She
+drank in the passing panorama of the streets: the dripping "L"
+stations, the light of the chestnut dealer, a blowing flame in the cold
+and dark, the dirty powder of snow blowing along icy sidewalks, and the
+newspapers weighted down at corner stands with pennies lying here and
+there in informal exchange. Cold, rosy faces poured into the subway
+hoods, warm, pale faces poured out, wet feet slipped on the frozen
+rubbish of the sidewalks, little salesgirls gossiped cheerfully as they
+dangled on straps in the packed cars.
+
+Often Martie and Teddy had their supper at Childs', in the clean warm
+brightness of marble and nickel-plate. Teddy knew their waitress and
+chattered eagerly over his rice and milk. Martie had a sandwich and
+coffee, watching the shabby fingers that fumbled for five-cent tips,
+the anxious eyes studying the bill-of-fare, the pale little
+working-women who favoured a supper of butter cakes and lemon meringue
+pie after the hard day.
+
+She would go home to find the breakfast dishes waiting, the beds
+unmade, the bathroom still steamed from Wallace's ablutions. Teddy
+tucked away for the night, she would dream over a half-sensed book. Why
+make the bed she was so soon to get into? Why wash the dishes now
+rather than wait until she was in her comfortable wrapper? She went
+back to her old habit of nibbling candy as she read.
+
+The jolly little Bohemian suppers she had foreseen never became a
+reality. Wallace hated cheap food; he was done with little restaurants,
+he said. More than that, among his friends there did not seem to be any
+of those simple, busy, gifted artists to whose acquaintance Martie had
+looked forward. The more distinguished members of his company he hardly
+knew; the others were semi-successful men like himself, women too poor
+and too busy to waste time or money, or other women of a more or less
+recognized looseness of morals. Martie detested them, their cologne,
+their boasting, their insinuations as to the personal lives of every
+actor or actress who might be mentioned. They had no reserves, no
+respect for love or marriage or parenthood; they told stories entirely
+beyond her understanding, and went about eating, drinking, dressing,
+and dancing as if these things were all the business of life.
+
+Wallace's favourite hospitality was extended to six silent,
+overdressed, genial male friends, known as "the crowd." These he
+frequently asked to dinner on Sunday nights, a hard game of poker
+always following. Martie did not play, but she liked to watch her
+husband's hands, and during this winter he attributed his phenomenal
+good luck to her. He never lost, and he always parted generously with
+such sums as he won. He loved his luck; the envious comments of the
+other players delighted him; the good dinner, and the presence of his
+beautiful wife always put him in his best mood. They called him "Three
+deuces Wallie," and Martie's remark that his weight was also
+"Two--two--two" passed for wit.
+
+She took his winnings without shame. It was to take them, indeed, that
+she endured the long, silent evening, with its incessant muttering and
+shuffling and slapping of cards. The gas whined and rasped above their
+heads, the air grew close and heavy with smoke. Ash-trays were loaded
+with the stumps and ashes of cigars; sticky beer glasses ringed the
+bare table. But Martie stuck to her post. At one o'clock it would all
+be over, and Wallace, carrying a glass of whisky-and-soda to his room,
+would be undressing between violent yawns and amused recollections.
+
+"Some of that comes to me, Wallie. I have the rent coming this week!"
+
+"Sure. Take all you want, old girl. You're tired, aren't you?"
+
+"Tired and cold." Martie's circulation was not good now, and she knew
+why. Her meals had lost their interest, and sometimes even Teddy's
+claims were neglected. She was sleepy, tired, heavy all the time. "When
+I see a spoon lying on the dining-room floor, and realize that it will
+lie there until I pick it up I could scream!" she told Wallace.
+
+"It's a shame, poor old girl!"
+
+"Oh, no--it's all right." She would blink back the tears. "I'm not
+sorry!"
+
+But she was sorry and afraid. She resented Wallace's easy sympathy,
+resented the doctor's advice to rest, not to worry, his mild
+observation that a good deal of discomfort was inevitable.
+
+Early in the new year she began to agitate the question of a dinner to
+the Drydens. Wallace, who had taken a fancy to Adele, agreed lazily to
+endure John's company, which he did not enjoy, for one evening. But he
+obstinately overruled Martie on the subject of a dinner at home.
+
+"Nix," said Wallace flatly. "I won't have my wife cooking for anybody!"
+
+"But Wallace--just grape-fruit and broilers and a salad! And they'll
+come out and help cook it. You don't know how informally we did things
+at Grandma's!"
+
+"Well, you're not doing things informally now. It would be different if
+you had a couple of servants!"
+
+"But it may be years before we have a couple of servants. Aren't we
+ever going to entertain, until then?"
+
+"I don't know anything about that. But I tell you I won't have them
+thinking that we're hard up. I'll take them to a restaurant somewhere,
+and show that little boob a square meal!"
+
+He finally selected an oppressively magnificent restaurant where a
+dollar-and-a-half table-d'hote dinner was served.
+
+"But I'd like to blow them to a real dinner!" he regretted.
+
+"Oh, Wallace, I'm not trying to impress them! We'll have more than
+enough to eat, and music, and a talk. Then we can break up at about
+ten, and we'll have done the decent thing!"
+
+The four were to meet at half-past six, but both Adele and Wallace were
+late, and John and Martie had half an hour's talk while they waited.
+Martie fairly bubbled in her joy at the chance to speak of books and
+poems, ideals and reforms again. She told him frankly and happily that
+she had missed him; she had wanted to see him so many times! And he
+looked tired; he had had grippe?
+
+"Always motherly!" he said, a smile on the strange mouth, but no
+corresponding smile in the faunlike eyes.
+
+Wallace arrived in a bad mood, as Martie instantly perceived. But
+Adele, radiant in a new hat, was prettily concerned for his cold and
+fatigue, and they were quickly escorted to a table near the fountain,
+and supplied with cocktails. Cheered, Wallace demanded the
+bill-of-fare, "the table-d'hote, Handsome!" said he to the appreciative
+waiter.
+
+The man lowered his head and murmured obsequiously. The table-d'hote
+dinner was served only on the balcony, sir.
+
+This caused a halt in the rising gaiety. The group looked a little
+blank. They were established here, the ladies had surrendered their
+wraps, envious late-comers were eying their table. Still Martie did not
+hesitate. She straightened back in her chair, and pushed her hands at
+full length upon the table, preliminary to rising.
+
+"Then we'll go up!" she said sensibly. But Wallace demurred. What was
+the difference! They would stay here.
+
+The difference proved to be about twenty dollars.
+
+"I hope it was worth it to you!" Wallace said bitterly to his wife at
+breakfast the next day. "Twenty-six dollars the check was. It was worth
+about twenty-six cents to me!"
+
+"But, Wallie, you didn't have to order wine!"
+
+"I didn't expect to order it, and if that boob had had the sense to
+know it, it was up to him to pay for it!"
+
+"Why, he's a perfect babe-in-the-woods about such things, Wallie! And
+none of us wanted it!" Martie tried to speak quietly, but at the memory
+of the night before her anger began to smoulder. Wallace had
+deliberately urged the ordering of wine, John quite as innocently
+disclaimed it. Adele had laughed that she could always manage a glass
+of champagne; Martie had merely murmured, "But we don't need it,
+Wallie; we've had so much now!"
+
+"We couldn't sit there holding that table down all evening," Wallace
+said now. Martie with a great effort kept silence. Opening his paper,
+her husband finished the subject sharply. "I want to tell you right
+now, Mart, that with me ordering the dinner, it was up to him to pay
+for the wine! Any man would know that! Ask any one of the crowd. He's a
+boob, that's all, and I'm done with him!"
+
+Martie rose, and went quietly into the kitchen. There was nothing to
+say. She did not speak of the Drydens again for a long while. Her own
+condition engrossed her; and she was not eager to take the initiative
+in hospitality or anything else.
+
+In April Wallace went on the road again for eleven weeks, and Martie
+and Ted enjoyed a delicious spring together. They spent hours on the
+omnibuses, hours in the parks. Spring in the West was cold, erratic;
+spring here came with what a heavenly wash of fragrance and heat! It
+was like a re-birth to abandon all the heavy clothing of the winter, to
+send Teddy dancing into the sunshine in socks and galatea and straw hat
+again!
+
+Martie's son was almost painfully dear to her. Every hour of his life,
+from the helpless days in the big hospital, through creeping and
+stammering and stumbling, she had clung to his little phases with
+hungry adoration, and that there was a deep sympathy between their two
+natures she came to feel more strongly every day. They talked
+confidentially together, his little body jolting against hers on the
+jolting omnibus, or leaning against her knees as she sat in the Park.
+She lingered in the lonely evening over the ceremony of his bath, his
+undressing, his prayers, and the romping that was always the last
+thing. For his sake, her love went out to meet the newcomer; another
+soft little Teddy to watch and bathe and rock to sleep; the reign of
+double-gowns and safety-pins and bottles again! Writing Wallace one of
+the gossipy, detailed letters that acknowledged his irregular checks,
+she said that they must move in the fall. They really, truly needed a
+better neighbourhood, a better nursery for "the children."
+
+One hot, heavy July morning she fell into serious musing over the news
+of Grandma Curley's death. Her son, a spoiled idler of forty, inherited
+the business. He wanted to know if Mrs. Bannister could come back. The
+house had never prospered so well as under her management. She could
+make her own terms.
+
+The sun was pouring into East Twenty-sixth Street, flashing an ugly
+glaring reflection against the awnings. At nine, the day was burning
+hot. Teddy, promised a trip to the Zoo, was loitering on the shady
+steps of the houses opposite, conscious of clean clothes, and of a
+holiday mood. The street was empty; a hurdy-gurdy unseen poured forth a
+brassy flood of sound. Trains, on the elevated road at the corner,
+crashed by. Martie had been packing a lunch; she went slowly back to
+the cut loaf and the rapidly softening butter.
+
+"Happy, Teddy?" she asked, when they had found seats in the train, and
+were rushing over the baking stillness of the city.
+
+"Are you, Moth'?" he asked quickly.
+
+She nodded, smiling. But, for some reasons vaguely defined, she was
+heavy-hearted. The city's endless drama of squalor and pain was all
+about her; she could not understand, she could not help, she could not
+even lift her own little problem out of the great total of failures!
+All day long the sense of impotence assailed her.
+
+Wallace was at home, when they came back, heavily asleep across his
+bed. Martie, with firmly shut lips, helped him into bed, and made the
+strong coffee for which he longed. After drinking it, he gave her a
+resentful, painstaking account of his unexpected return. His face was
+flushed, his voice thick. She gathered that he had lost his position.
+
+"He came right up to me before Young, d'ye see? He put it up to me.
+'Nelson,' I says, 'Nelson, this isn't a straight deal!' I says. 'My
+stuff is my stuff,' I says, 'but this is something else again.'
+'Wallie,' he says, 'that may be right, too. But listen,' he says. I
+says, 'I'm going to do damn little listening to you or Young!' I says,
+'Cut that talk about my missing rehearsals--'"
+
+The menacing, appealing voice went on and on. Martie watched him in
+something far beyond scorn or shame. He had not shaved recently, his
+face was blotched.
+
+"What else could I do, Mart?" he asked presently. She answered with a
+long sigh:
+
+"Nothing, I suppose, Wallace."
+
+After a while he slept heavily. The afternoon was brassy hot. Women
+manipulated creaking clotheslines across the long double row of
+backyards; the day died on a long, gasping twilight. Martie let Teddy
+go to the candy store for ten cents' worth of ice cream for his supper.
+She made herself iced tea, and deliberately forced herself to read.
+To-night she would not think. After a while she wrote her letter of
+regret to George Curley.
+
+The situation was far from desperate, after all. Wallace had a headache
+the next day, but on the day after that he shaved and dressed
+carefully, assured his wife that this experience should be the last of
+its type, and began to look for an engagement. He had some money, and
+he insisted upon buying her a thin, dark gown, loose and cool. He
+carried Teddy off for whole afternoons, leaving Martie to doze, read,
+and rest; and learning that she still had a bank account of something
+more than three hundred dollars--left from poker games and from her old
+bank account--she engaged a stupid, good-natured coloured girl to do
+the heavy work. Isabeau Eato was willing and strong, and for three
+dollars a week she did an unbelievable amount of drudgery. Martie felt
+herself fortunate, and listened to the crash of dishes, the running of
+water, and the swish of Isabeau's broom with absolute satisfaction.
+
+One broiling afternoon she was trying to read in the darkened dining
+room. Heat was beating against the prostrate city in metallic waves,
+but since noon there had been occasional distant flashes toward the
+west, and faint rumblings that predicted the coming storm. In an hour
+or two the streets would be awash, and white hats and flimsy gowns
+flying toward shelter; meanwhile, there was only endurance. She could
+only breathe the motionless leaden air, smell the dry, stale odours of
+the house, and listen to the thundering drays and cars in the streets.
+
+Wallace had gone to Yonkers to see a moving picture manager; Isabeau
+had taken Teddy with her on a trip to the Park. Sitting back in a deep
+chair, with her back to the dazzling light of the window, Martie closed
+her book, shut her eyes, and fell into a reverie. Expense, pain,
+weakness, helplessness; she dreaded them all. She dreaded the doctor,
+the hospital, the brisk, indifferent nurses; she hated above all the
+puzzled realization that all this cost to her was so wasted; Wallace
+was not sorry for the child's coming, nor was she; that was all. No one
+was glad. No one praised her for the slow loss of days and nights, for
+dependence, pain, and care. Her children might live to comfort her;
+they might not. She had been no particular comfort to her own
+father--her own mother--
+
+Tears slipped through her closed lids, and for a moment her lips
+quivered. She struggled half-angrily for self-control, and opened her
+book.
+
+"Martie?" said a voice from the doorway. She looked up to see John
+Dryden standing there.
+
+The sight of the familiar crooked smile, and the half-daring,
+half-bashful eyes, stirred her heart with keen longing; she needed
+friendship, sympathy, understanding so desperately! She clung eagerly
+to his hands.
+
+He sat down beside her, and rumpled his hair in furious embarrassment
+and excitement, studying her with a wistful and puzzled smile. She did
+not realize how her pale face, loosely massed hair, and black-rimmed
+eyes impressed him.
+
+"John! I am so glad! Tell me everything; how are you, and how's Adele?"
+
+Adele was well. He was well. His wife's sister, Mrs. Baker of Browning,
+Indiana, was visiting them. Things were much the same at the office. He
+had not been reading anything particularly good.
+
+She laughed at his sparse information.
+
+"But, John--talk! Have you been to any lectures lately? What have you
+been doing?" she demanded.
+
+"I've been thinking for days of what we should talk about when we saw
+each other," he said, laughing excitedly. "But now that I'm here I
+can't remember them!"
+
+The sense his presence always gave her, of being at ease, of being
+happily understood, was enveloping Martie. She was as comfortable with
+John as she might have been with Sally, as sure of his affection and
+interest. She suddenly realized that she had missed John of late,
+without quite knowing what it was she missed.
+
+"You're going on with your writing, John?"
+
+"Oh"--he rumpled his hair again--"what's the use?"
+
+"Why, that's no way to talk. Aren't you doing ANYTHING?"
+
+"Not much," he grinned boyishly.
+
+"But, John, that's sheer laziness! How do you ever expect to get out of
+the groove, if you don't make a start?"
+
+"Oh, damn it all, Martie," he said mildly, with a whimsical smile,
+"what's the use? I suppose there isn't a furniture clerk in the city
+that doesn't feel he is fit for great things!"
+
+"You didn't talk like this last year," Martie said, in disappointment
+and reproach. John looked at her uneasily, and then said boldly:
+
+"How's Ted?"
+
+"Sweet." Martie laid one hand on her breast, and drew a short, stifled
+breath. "Isn't it fearful?" she said, of the heat.
+
+John nodded absently: she knew him singularly unaffected by anything so
+trivial as mere heat or cold. He was fingering a magazine carelessly,
+suddenly he flung it aside.
+
+"I am writing something, of course!" he confessed. "But it seems sort
+of rotten, to me."
+
+"But I'm glad!" she said, with shining eyes.
+
+"I work at it in the office," John added. "And what is it?"
+
+"You know what it is: you suggested it!"
+
+"_I_ did?"
+
+"You said it would make a good play."
+
+Martie's thin cheek dimpled, she widened her eyes.
+
+"I don't remember!"
+
+"It was when I was reading Strickland's 'Queens.' You said that this
+one's life would make a good play."
+
+"Oh, I do dimly remember!" She knotted her brows. "Mary--Mary
+Isabelle--an Italian girl?--wasn't it?"
+
+"Mary Beatrice," he corrected simply.
+
+"Of course! And does it work up pretty well?"
+
+"Fine!"
+
+"How much have you done, John?"
+
+"Oh, not much!"
+
+"Oh, John, for heaven's sake--you will drive me insane!" she laughed
+joyously, laying her hand over his. "Tell me about it." She laughed
+again when he drew some crumpled pages from his pocket. But he was
+presently garrulous, sketching his plan to her, reading a passage here
+and there, firing her with his own interest and delight. He had as
+little thought of boring her as she of being bored, they fled together
+from the noise and heat of the city, and trod the Dover sands, and rode
+triumphant into the old city of London at the King's side.
+
+"I'm not a judge--I wish I was," she said finally. "But it seems to me
+extraordinary!"
+
+He silently folded the sheets, and put them away. Glancing at his face,
+she saw that its thoughtful look was almost stern. Martie wondered if
+she had said something to offend him.
+
+When he sat down beside her again, she again laid her hand on his.
+
+"What is it, John?" she asked anxiously.
+
+"Nothing!" he said, with a brief glance and smile.
+
+"I've made you cross?"
+
+"You!" His dark gaze was on the floor, his hands locked. For a full
+minute there was silence in the room. Then he looked up at her with a
+disturbing smile. "I am human, Martie," he said simply.
+
+The note was so new in their relationship that Martie's heart began to
+hammer with astonishment and with a curious thrilling pleasure. There
+was nothing for her to say. She could hardly believe that he knew what
+he implied, or that she construed the words aright. He was so different
+from all other men, so strangely old in many ways, so boyish in others.
+A little frightened, she smiled at him in silence. But he did not raise
+his eyes to meet her look.
+
+"I did not think that when I was thirty I would be a clerk in a
+furniture house, Martie!" he said sombrely, after awhile.
+
+"You may not be!" she reminded him hearteningly. And presently she
+added: "I did not think that I would be a poor man's wife on the upper
+East Side!"
+
+He looked up then with a quick smile.
+
+"Isn't it the deuce?" he asked.
+
+"Life is queer!" Martie said, shrugging.
+
+"I was up in Connecticut last week," John said, "and I'll tell you what
+I saw there. I went up to that neighbourhood to buy some old furniture
+for an order we were filling--I was there only a few hours. I found a
+little old white house, on a river bank, with big trees over it. It was
+on a foundation of old stones, that had been painted white, and there
+was an orchard, with a stone wall. The man wanted eighteen hundred
+dollars for it."
+
+"Is THAT all?" Martie asked, amazed.
+
+"That's all. I sat there and talked to him for awhile."
+
+"Well?" said Martie, as he stopped.
+
+"Well, nothing," he answered, after a moment's pause. "Only I've been
+thinking about it ever since--what it would be to live there, and
+write, and walk about that little farm! Funny, isn't it? Eighteen
+hundred dollars--not much, only I'll never have it. And you are another
+poor man's wife--only not mine! Do you believe in God?"
+
+"You know I do!" she answered, laughing, but a little shaken by his
+seriousness.
+
+"You think GOD manages things this way?"
+
+"John, don't talk like a high school boy!"
+
+"I suppose it sounds that way," he said mildly, and he rose suddenly
+from his chair. "Well, I have to go!" He looked at her keenly. "But you
+don't look very well, Martie," he said. "You've no colour at all. Is it
+the weather?"
+
+"John, what a baby you are!" But Martie was amazed, under her flush of
+laughter, at his simplicity. Could it be possible that he did not know?
+"I am expecting something very precious here one of these days," she
+said. He looked at her with a polite smile, entirely uncomprehending.
+"Surely you know that we--that I--am going to have another baby, John?"
+she asked.
+
+She saw the muscles of his face stiffen, and the blood rise. He looked
+at her steadily. A curious silence hung between them.
+
+"Didn't you know?" Martie pursued lightly.
+
+"No," he said at last thickly, "I didn't know." He gave her a look
+almost frightening in its wildness; shot to the heart, he might have
+managed just such a smile. He made a frantic gesture with his hands.
+"Of course--" he said at random. "Of course--a baby!" He walked across
+the room to look at a picture on the wall. "That's rather--pretty!" he
+said in a suffocating voice. Suddenly he came back, and sat close
+beside her; his face was pale. "Martie," he said pitifully, "it's
+dangerous for you--you're not strong, and if you--if you die, you
+know----You look pale now, and you're so thin. I don't know anything
+about it, but I wish it was over!"
+
+Tears sprang to Martie's eyes, but they were tears of exquisite joy.
+She laid a warm hand over his.
+
+"Why, John, dear, there's no danger!"
+
+"Isn't there?" he asked doubtfully.
+
+"Not the least, you goose! I'm ever so glad and proud about it--don't
+look so woe-begone!"
+
+Their hands were tightly locked: her face was radiant as she smiled up
+at him.
+
+"It all works out, John--the furniture clerking, you know, and the
+being poor, and all that!"
+
+"Sure it does!"
+
+"Other people have succeeded in spite of it, I mean, so why not you and
+I?"
+
+"Of course, they're not BORN rich and successful," he submitted
+thoughtfully.
+
+"Look at Lincoln--and Napoleon!" Martie said hardily.
+
+John scowled down at the hand he held.
+
+"Well, it's easier for some people than others," he stated firmly.
+"Lincoln may have had to split rails for his supper--what DO you split
+rails for, anyway?" he interrupted himself to ask, suddenly diverted.
+
+"Fences, I guess!" Martie offered, on a gale of laughter.
+
+"Well, whatever it was. But I don't see what they needed so many fences
+for! But anyway, being poor or rich doesn't seem to matter half as much
+as some other things! And now I'm going. Good-bye, Martie."
+
+"And write me, John, and send me books!" she urged, as he turned away.
+
+He was at the door: meditating with his hand on the knob, and his back
+turned to her. Martie watched him, expecting some parting word. But he
+did not even turn to smile a farewell. He let himself quietly out
+without another glance, and was gone. A moment later she heard the
+outer door close.
+
+She sat on, in the darkening room, her book forgotten. The storm was
+coming fast now. Women in the backyards were drawing in their
+clothes-lines with a great creaking and rattling, and the first rush of
+warm, sullen drops struck the dusty dining-room window. Curtains
+streamed, and pictures on the wall stirred in the damp, warm wind.
+
+Half an hour of furious musketry passed: blue dashes lighted the room
+with an eerie splendour, thunder clapped and rolled; died away toward
+the south as a fresh onslaught poured in from the north.
+
+Martie heeded nothing. Her soul was wrapped in a deep peace, and as the
+cooling air swept in, she dropped her tired head against the chair's
+cushion, and drifted into a dream of river and orchard, and of a white
+house set in green grass.
+
+She knew that John would write her: she held the unopened envelope in
+her fingers the next morning, a strange, sweet emotion at her heart.
+The beautiful, odd handwriting, the cleanly chosen words, these made
+the commonplace little note significant.
+
+"Who's your letter from?" Wallace asked idly. She tossed it to him
+unconcernedly: she had told him of John's call. "He must have a case on
+you, Mart!" Wallace said indifferently.
+
+"Well, in his curious way, perhaps he has," she answered honestly.
+
+Ten days later she wrote him an answer. She thanked him for the books,
+and announced that her daughter Margaret was just a week old, and sent
+her love to Uncle John. Adele immediately sent baby roses and a card to
+say that she was dying to see the baby, and would come soon. She never
+came: but after that John wrote occasionally to Martie, and she
+answered his notes. They did not try to meet.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+Wallace was playing a few weeks' engagement in the vaudeville houses of
+New Jersey and Brooklyn when his second child was born. He had been at
+home for a few hours that morning, coming in for clean linen, a good
+breakfast, and a talk with his wife. He was getting fifty dollars a
+week, as support for a woman star, and was happy and confident. The
+hard work--twelve performances a week--left small time for idling or
+drinking, and Martie's eager praise added the last touch to his content.
+
+She was happy, too, as she walked back into the darkened, orderly
+house. It was just noon. Isabeau, having finished her work, had
+departed with Teddy to see a friend in West One Hundredth Street; John
+had sent Martie Maeterlinck's "Life of the Bee," and a fat, inviting
+brown book, "All the Days of My Life." She had planned to go to the
+hospital next week, Wallace coming home on Sunday to act as escort, and
+she determined to keep the larger book for the stupid days of
+convalescence.
+
+She stretched herself on the dining-room couch, reached for the smaller
+book, and began to read. For a second, a look of surprise crossed her
+face, and she paused. Then she found the opening paragraph, and plunged
+into the story. But she had not read three sentences before she stopped
+again.
+
+Suddenly, in a panic, she was on her feet. Frightened, breathless,
+laughing, she went into the kitchen.
+
+"Isabeau out ... Heavenly day! What shall I do!" she whispered. "It
+can't be! Fool that I was to let her go ... what SHALL I do!"
+
+Life caught her and shook her like a helpless leaf in a whirlwind. She
+went blindly into the bedroom and began feverishly to fling off her
+outer garments. Presently she made her way back to the kitchen again,
+and put her lips to the janitor's telephone.
+
+Writhing seconds ensued. Finally she heard the shrill answering whistle.
+
+"Mr. Kelly, is Mrs. Brice at home, do you know? Or Mrs. Napthaly? This
+is Mrs. Bannister... I'm ill. Will you get somebody?"
+
+She broke off abruptly; catching the back of a chair. Kelly was a
+grandfather ... he would understand. But if somebody didn't come pretty
+soon...
+
+It seemed hours; it was only minutes before the blessed sound of
+waddling feet came to the bedroom door. Old Grandma Simons, Mrs.
+Napthaly's mother, came in. Martie liked and Teddy loved the shapeless,
+moustached old woman, who lived out obscure dim days in the flat below,
+washing and dressing and feeding little black-eyed grandchildren.
+Martie never saw her in anything but a baggy, spotted black
+house-dress, but there were great gatherings and feasts occasionally
+downstairs, and then presumably the adored old head of the family was
+more suitably clad.
+
+"Vell ... vot you try and do?" said Grandma Simons, grasping the
+situation at once, and full of sympathy and approval.
+
+"I don't know!" half-laughed, half-gasped Martie from the pillows. "I'm
+awfully afraid my baby..." A spasm of pain brought her on one elbow, to
+a raised position. "Oh, DON'T DO THAT!" she screamed.
+
+"I do nothing!" said the old woman soothingly. And as Martie sank back
+on the pillows, gasping and exhausted, yet with excited relief
+brightening her face, Grandma Simons added triumphantly: "Now you shall
+rest; you are a goot girl!"
+
+A second later the thin cry with which the newborn catch the first
+weary breath of an alien world floated through the room. Protesting,
+raw, it fell on Martie's ears like the resolving chord of an exquisite
+melody. Still breathless, still panting from strain and fright, she
+smiled.
+
+"Ah, the darling! Is he all right?" she whispered.
+
+"You haf a girl!" the old woman interrupted her clucking and grumbling
+to say briefly. "Vill you lay still, and let the old Grandma fix you,
+or not vill you?" she added sternly. "Grandma who has het elefen of
+dem...."
+
+"Don't cry, little Margaret!" Martie murmured, happy under the kindly
+adjusting old hands. The old woman stumped about composedly, opening
+bureau drawers and scratching matches in the kitchen, before she would
+condescend to telephone for the superfluous doctor. She was pouring a
+flood of Yiddish endearments and diminutives about the newcomer, when
+the surprised practitioner arrived. Mrs. Simons scouted the idea of a
+nurse; she would come upstairs, her daughters would come upstairs--what
+was it, one baby! Martie was allowed a cupful of hot milk, and went to
+sleep with one arm about the flannel bundle that was Margaret.
+
+Well--she thought, drifting into happy dreams--of course, the hospital
+was wonderful: the uniformed nurses, the system, the sanitation. But
+this was wonderful, too. So many persons had to be consulted, had to be
+involved, in the coming of a hospital baby; so much time, so many
+different rooms and hallways.
+
+The clock had not yet struck two; she had given Wallace his breakfast
+at eleven, Isabeau would be home at five; Grandma had gone downstairs
+to borrow some of the put-away clothes of the last little Napthaly.
+Martie had nothing to do but smile and sleep. To-morrow, perhaps, they
+would let her go on with "The Life of the Bee."
+
+Peace lapped soul and body. The long-approaching trial was over. In a
+few days she would arise, mistress of herself once more, and free to
+remake her life.
+
+First, they must move. Even if they could afford to pay six hundred
+dollars a year in rent, this flat was neither convenient nor sanitary
+for little children. Secondly, Wallace must understand that while he
+worked and was sober, his wife would do her share; if he failed her,
+she must find some other life. Thirdly, as soon as the baby's claims
+made it possible, Martie must find some means of making money; her own
+money, independent of what Wallace chose to give.
+
+She pondered the various possibilities. She could open a
+boarding-house; although that meant an outlay for furniture and rent.
+She could take a course in library work or stenography; that meant
+leaving the children all day.
+
+She began to study advertisements in the newspapers for working
+housekeepers, and one day wrote a businesslike application to the
+company that controlled a line of fruit steamers between the city and
+Panama. Mrs. Napthaly's sister-in-law was stewardess on one of these,
+and had good pay. Short stories, film-plays, newspaper work--other
+women did these things. But how had they begun?
+
+"Begin at the beginning!" she said cheerfully to herself. The move was
+the beginning. Through the cool autumn days she resolutely hunted for
+flats. It was a wearisome task, especially when Wallace accompanied
+her, for his tastes ran to expensive and vestibuled apartments and
+fashionable streets. Martie sternly held to quiet side streets, cut off
+from the city by the barriers of elevated trains and the cheap shopping
+districts.
+
+When she found what she wanted, she and Wallace had a bitter struggle.
+He refused at first to consider four large bare shabby rooms in a poor
+street, overlooking a coal-yard, and incidentally, on the very bank of
+the East River. What cars went there, he demanded indignantly; what
+sort of neighbours would they have? What would their friends think!
+
+Martie patiently argued her point. The neighbourhood, the east fifties,
+if cheap and crowded, was necessarily quiet because the wide street
+ended at the river. The rooms were on a first floor, and so pleasantly
+accessible for baby and baby-carriage. The coalyard, if not
+particularly pleasant, was not unwholesome; there was sunshine in every
+room, and finally, the rent was eighteen dollars. They must entertain
+their friends elsewhere.
+
+She did not know then that what really won him was her youth and
+beauty; the new brilliant colour, the blue, blue eyes, the revived
+strength and charm of the whole, lovely woman. She put her arms about
+him, and he kissed her and gave her her way.
+
+Happily they went shopping. Martie had gathered some furniture in her
+various housekeeping adventures; the rest must be bought. They prowled
+through second-hand stores for the big things: beds, tables, a
+"chestard" for Wallace. The cottage china, chintzes, net curtains, and
+grass rugs were new. Martie conceded a plaster pipe-rack, set with
+little Indian faces, to Wallace; her own extravagance was a
+meat-chopper. Wallace got a cocktail shaker, and when the first grocery
+order went in, gin and vermouth and whisky-were included. Martie made
+their first meal a celebration, in the room that was sitting-and
+dining-room combined, and tired and happy, they sat long into the
+evening over the table, talking of the future.
+
+Theoretically, Wallace agreed with her. If they were to succeed, there
+must be hard work, carefully controlled expenditure, and temperance.
+They were still young, their children were well, and life was before
+them. In a few years Wallace might make a big success; then they could
+have a little country home, and belong to a country club, and really
+live. Eager tears brimmed Martie's eyes as she planned and he approved.
+
+Actually, Wallace was not quite so satisfactory. He would be
+sweet-tempered and helpful for a few days, but he expected a reward. He
+expected his wife's old attitude of utter trust and devotion. Rewarded
+by a happy evening when they dined and talked in utter harmony, he
+would fail her again. Then came dark days, when Martie's heart
+smouldered resentfully hour after busy hour. How could he--how could he
+risk his position, waste his money, antagonize his wife, break all his
+promises! She could not forgive him this time, she could not go through
+the humiliating explanations, apologies, asseverations, again be
+reconciled and again deceived!
+
+He knew how to handle her, and she knew he knew. When the day or two of
+sickness and headache were over he would shave and dress carefully and
+come quietly and penitently back into the life of the house. Would Ted
+like to go off with Dad for a walk? Couldn't he go to market for her?
+Couldn't he go along and wheel Margaret?
+
+Silently, with compressed lips, Martie might pass and repass him. But
+the moment always came when he caught her and locked her in his arms.
+
+"Martie, dearest! I know how you feel--I won't blame you! I know what a
+skunk and a beast I am. What can I do? How can I show you how sorry I
+am? Don't--don't feel so badly! Tell me anything--any oath, any
+promise, I'll make it! You're just breaking my heart, acting like this!"
+
+For half an hour, for an hour, her hurt might keep her unresponsive. In
+the end, she always kissed him, with wet eyes, and they began again.
+
+Happy hours followed. Wallace would help her with the baby's bath, with
+Teddy's dressing, and the united Bannisters go forth for a holiday.
+Martie, her splendid square little son leaning on her shoulder, the
+veiled bundle of blankets that was Margaret safely sleeping in the
+crib, her handsome husband dressing for "a party," felt herself a
+blessed and happy woman.
+
+Frequently, when he was not playing, they went to matinees, afterward
+drifting out into the five o'clock darkness to join the Broadway
+current. Here Wallace always met friends: picturesque looking men, and
+bright-eyed, hard-faced women. Invariably they went into some hotel,
+and sat about a bare table, for drinks. Warmed and cheered, the
+question of convivialities arose.
+
+"Lissen; we are all going to Kingwell's for eats," Wallace would tell
+his wife.
+
+"But, Wallace, Isabeau is going to have dinner at home!" It was no use;
+the bright eye, the thickened lips, the loosened speech evaded her. He
+understood her, he had perfect self-control, but she could influence
+him no longer. Mutinous, she would go with the chattering women into
+the dressing room, where they powdered, rouged lips and cheeks, and
+fluffed their hair.
+
+"Lord, he is a scream, that boy!" Mrs. Dolly Fairbanks might remark
+appreciatively, offering Martie a mud-coloured powder-pad before
+restoring it to the top of her ravelled silk stocking. "I'll bet he's a
+scream in his own home!"
+
+Martie could only smile forcedly in response. She was not in sympathy
+with her companions. She hated the extravagance, the noise, and the
+drinking that were a part of the evening's fun. Wallace's big, white,
+ringed hand touched the precious greenbacks so readily; here! they
+wanted another round of drinks; what did everybody want?
+
+Wherever they went, the scene was the same: heat, tobacco smoke, music;
+men drinking, women drinking, greenbacks changing hands, waiters
+pocketing tips. Who liked it? she asked herself bitterly. In the old
+days she and Sally had thought it would be fun to be in New York, to
+know real actors and actresses, to go about to restaurants in taxicabs.
+But what if the money that paid for the taxicabs were needed for Ted's
+winter shirts and Margar's new crib? What if the actors were only
+rather stupid and excitable, rather selfish and ignorant men and women,
+to whom homes and children, gardens and books were only words?
+
+Presumably the real actors, the real writers and painters led a mad and
+merry life somewhere, wore priceless gowns and opened champagne; but it
+was not here. These were the imitators, the pretenders, and the rich
+idlers who had nothing better to do than believe in the pretenders.
+
+Still, when Wallace suggested it, Martie found it wise to yield. He
+might stumble home beside her at eleven, the worse for the eating and
+drinking, but at least he did come home, and she could tell herself
+that the men in the car who had smiled at his condition were only
+brutes; she would never see them again; what did their opinion matter!
+In other ways she yielded to him; peace, peace and affection at any
+cost. Yet it cost her dear, for the possibility of another child's
+coming was the one thought that frightened and dismayed her.
+
+Strongly contrasted to Wallace's open-handedness when he was with his
+friends was the strict economy Martie was obliged to practise in her
+housekeeping. She went to market herself, as the spring came on,
+heaping her little purchases at Margar's feet in the coach. Teddy
+danced and chattered beside her, neighbours stopped to smile at the
+baby. At the fruit carts, the meat market, the grocery, Martie pondered
+and planned. Oranges had gone up, lamb had gone up--dear, dear, dear!
+
+Sitting at the grocery counter, she would rearrange her menus.
+
+"Butter fifty--my, that is high! Hasn't the new butter come in? I had
+better have half a pound, I think. And the beans, and the onions, yes.
+Let me see--how do you sell the canned asparagus--that's too much. Send
+me those things, Mr. O'Brien, and I'll see what I can get in the
+market."
+
+All about her, in the heart-warming spring sunshine, other women were
+mildly lamenting, mildly bartering. Martie's brain was still busily
+milling, as she wheeled the coach back through the checkered sun and
+shade of the elevated train. She would bump the coach down into the
+area, carefully loading her arms with small packages, catching Margar
+to her shoulder.
+
+Panting, the perspiration breaking out on her forehead, she would enter
+the dining room.
+
+"Take her, Isabeau! My arms are breaking! Whew!--it is HOT! Not now,
+Teddy, you can't have anything until lunch time. Amuse her a minute,
+Isabeau, I can't take her until--I get--my breath! I had to change
+dinner; he had no liver. I got veal for veal loaf; Mr. Bannister likes
+that; and stuffed onions, and the pie, and baked potatoes. Make tea.
+Put that down, Teddy, you can't have that. Now, my blessedest girl,
+come to your mother! She's half asleep now; I'll change her and put her
+out for her nap!"
+
+The baby fed and asleep, Ted out again, Martie would serve Wallace's
+breakfast herself rather than interrupt the steady thumping of irons in
+the kitchen. She tried to be patient with his long delays.
+
+"How's the head?" she would ask, sitting opposite him with little socks
+to match, or boxed strawberries to stem.
+
+"Oh, rotten! I woke up when the baby did."
+
+"But, Wallie--that was seven o'clock! You've been asleep since."
+
+"Just dozing. I heard you come in!"
+
+"Well, I think I'll move her clothes out of that room. Aren't your eggs
+good?"
+
+"Nope. They taste like storage. I should think we could get good eggs
+now!"
+
+"They OUGHT to be good!"
+
+"You ought to get a telephone in here," he might return sourly. "Then
+you could deal with some decent place! I hate the way women pinch and
+squeeze to save five cents; there's nothing in it!"
+
+Silence. Martie's face flushed, her fingers flew.
+
+"What are you doing to-day?" she might ask, after a while.
+
+"Oh, I'll go down town, I guess. Never can tell when something'll
+break. Bates told me that Foster was anxious to see me. He says they're
+having a deuce of a time getting people for their plays. Bates says to
+stick 'em for a couple of hundred a week."
+
+Martie placed small hope in such a hint, but she was glad he could.
+When he had sauntered away, she would go on patiently, mixing the
+baby's bottles, picking toys from the floor, tying and re-tying Ted's
+shoe-laces. This was a woman's life. Martha Bannister was not a martyr;
+nobody in the city could stop to help or pity her.
+
+The hot summer shut down upon them, and the baby drooped, even though
+Martie was careful to wheel her out into the shade by the river every
+day. She herself drooped, staring at life helplessly, hopelessly. In
+March there would be a third child.
+
+After a restless night, the sun woke her, morning after morning,
+glaring into her room at six. Wearily, languidly, she dressed the
+twisting and leaping Teddy, fastened little Margar, with her string of
+spools and her shabby double-gown, in the high-chair. The kitchen
+smelled of coffee, of grease; the whole neighbourhood smelled in the
+merciless heat of the summer day. Had that meat spoiled; was the cream
+just a little turned?
+
+Ted, always absorbed in wheels, pulleys, and nails, would be in an
+interrogative mood.
+
+"Mother, could a giant step across the East River?"
+
+"What was it, dear?--the water was running; Mother didn't hear you."
+
+"Could a giant step across a river?"
+
+"Why, I suppose he could. Don't touch that, Ted."
+
+"Could he step across the whole WORLD?"
+
+"I don't know. Here's your porridge, dear. Listen----"
+
+For Wallace was shouting. Martie would go to the bedroom door, to
+interrogate the tousle-headed, heaving form under the bedclothes.
+
+"Say, Martie, isn't there an awful lot of noise out there?"
+
+Martie would stand silent for a moment.
+
+"You can't blame the children for chattering, Wallace."
+
+"Well, you tell Ted he'll catch it, if I hear any more of it!"
+
+She would go lifelessly back to the kitchen, to sip a cup of scalding
+black coffee. Margar went into her basket for her breakfast, banging
+the empty bottle rapturously against the wicker sides as a finale.
+
+"Wash both their faces, Isabeau," Martie would murmur, flinging back
+her head with a long, weary sigh. "There are no buttons on this suit;
+I'll have to go back into Mr. Bannister's room--too bad, for he's
+asleep again! Yes, dear, you may go to market and push the
+carriage--DON'T ask Mother that again, Ted! I always let you go, and
+you ALWAYS push Sister." Her voice would sink to a whisper, and her
+face fall into her hands. "Oh, Isabeau, I do feel so wretched.
+Sometimes it seems as if----However!" and with a sudden desperate
+courage, Martie would rally herself. "However, it's all in the day's
+work! Run down to the sidewalk, Ted, and Mother'll be right down with
+the baby!"
+
+Coming in an hour later perhaps, Wallace, better-natured now, would
+call her again.
+
+"Come in, Mart! Hell-oo! Is that somebody that loves her Daddy?"
+
+"She's just going to have her bottle, Wallie" Martie would fret.
+
+"Well, here! Let me give it to her." Sitting up in bed, his nightgown
+falling open at the throat, Margar's father would hold out big arms for
+the child.
+
+"No, you can't. She'll never go to sleep at that rate; and if she
+misses her nap, that upsets her whole day!"
+
+"Lord, but you are in a grouch, Mart. For Heaven's sake, cheer up!"
+Wallace, rumpling and kissing his daughter, would give her a
+reproachful look.
+
+Martie's face always darkened resentfully at such a speech. Sometimes
+she did not answer.
+
+"Perhaps if YOU couldn't sleep," she might say in a low, shaken tone,
+"and you felt as miserable as I do, you might not be so cheerful!"
+
+"Oh, well, I know! But you know it's nothing serious, and it won't
+last. Forget it! After all, your mother had four children, and mine had
+seven, and they didn't make such a fuss!"
+
+He did not mean to be unkind, she would remind herself. And what he
+said was true, after all. There was nothing more to say.
+
+"Wallie, have you any money for the laundry?"
+
+"Oh, Lord! How much is it?"
+
+"Two dollars and thirteen cents; four weeks now."
+
+"Well, when does he come?"
+
+"To-day."
+
+"Well, you tell him that I'll step in to-morrow and pay the whole
+thing. I'm going to see Richards to-day; I won't be home to dinner."
+
+"But I thought you were going to see that man in the Bronx, about the
+moving picture job to-morrow?"
+
+"Yes, I am. What about it?"
+
+"Nothing. Only, Wallie, if you have dinner with Mr. Richards and all
+those men, you know--you know you may not feel like--like getting up
+early to-morrow!" Martie, hesitating in the doorway with the baby,
+wavered between tact and truth.
+
+"Why don't you say I'll be drunk, while you're about it?"
+
+The ugly tone would rouse everything that was ugly in response.
+
+"Very well, I WILL say that, if you insist!" The slamming door ended
+the conversation; Martie trembled as she put the child to bed.
+Presently Isabeau would come to her to say noncommittally, but with
+watchful, white-rimmed eyes, that Mist' Bans'ter he didn' want no
+breakfuss, he jus' take hisse'f off. For the rest of the day, Martie
+carried a heart of lead.
+
+Mentally, morally, physically, the little family steadily descended.
+With Martie too ill to do more than drag herself through the autumn
+days, Wallace idle and ugly, Isabeau overworked and discontented, and
+bills accumulating on every side, there was no saving element left.
+Desperately the wife and mother plodded on; the children must have milk
+and bread, the rent-collector must be pacified if not satisfied.
+Everything else was unimportant. Her own appearance mattered nothing,
+the appearance of the house mattered nothing. She pinned the children's
+clothing when their buttons disappeared; she slipped a coat wearily
+over her house-dress, and went to the delicatessen store five minutes
+before dinner-time. She was thin enough now,--Martie, who had always
+longed to be thin. Sometimes, sitting on the side of an unmade bed,
+with a worn little shirt of Ted's held languidly in her hands, she
+would call the maid.
+
+"Isabeau! Hasn't Teddy a clean shirt?"
+
+"No, MA'AM! You put two them shirts in yo' basket 'n' says how you's
+going to fix 'em!"
+
+"I must get at those shirts," Martie would muse helplessly. "Come, Ted,
+look what you're doing! Pay attention, dear!"
+
+"Man come with yo meat bill, Mis' Ban'ster," Isabeau might add,
+lingering in the doorway. "Ah says you's OUT."
+
+"Thank you, Isabeau." Perhaps Martie would laugh forlornly. "Never
+mind--things must change! We can't go on THIS way!"
+
+Suddenly, she was ill. Without warning, without the slip or stumble or
+running upstairs that she was quite instinctively avoiding, the
+accident befell. Martie, sobered, took to her bed, and sent Isabeau
+flying for Dr. Converse, the old physician whose pleasant wife had
+often spoken to Teddy in the market. Strange--strange, that she who so
+loved children should be reduced now to mere thankfulness that the
+little life was not to be, mere gratitude for an opportunity to lie
+quiet in bed!
+
+"For I suppose I should stay in bed for a few days?" Martie asked the
+doctor. Until she was told she might get up. Very well, but he must
+remember that she had a husband and two children to care for, and make
+that soon.
+
+Dr. Converse did not smile in answer. After a while she knew why. The
+baffling weakness did not go, the pain and restlessness seemed to have
+been hers forever. Day after day she lay helpless; while Isabeau
+grumbled, Margar fretted, and Teddy grew noisy and unmanageable.
+Wallace was rarely at home, the dirt and confusion of the house rode
+Martie's sick brain like a nightmare. She told herself, as she lay
+longing for an appetizing meal, an hour's freedom from worry, that
+there was a point beyond which no woman might be expected to bear
+things, that if life went on in this way she must simply turn her face
+to the wall and die.
+
+Ghost-white, she was presently on her feet. The unbearable had been
+borne. She was getting well again; ridden with debts, and as shabby and
+hopeless as it could well be, the Bannister family staggered on. Money
+problems buzzed about Martie's eyes like a swarm of midges: Isabeau had
+paid this charge of seventy cents, there was a drug bill for six
+dollars and ten cents--eighty cents, a dollar and forty cents,
+sixty-five cents--the little sums cropped up on all sides.
+
+Martie took pencil and paper, and wrote them all down. The hideous
+total was two hundred and seventeen dollars on the last day of October.
+But there would be rent again on the eleventh--
+
+Her bright head went suddenly down on her arms. Oh, no--no--no! It
+couldn't be done. It was all too hard, too bewildering--
+
+Suddenly, looking at the pencilled sums, the inspiration came. Was it a
+memory of those days long ago in Monroe, when she had calculated so
+carefully the cost of coming on to the mysterious fairyland of New
+York? As carefully now she began to count the cost of going home.
+
+It was five years since she had seen her own people; and in that time
+she had carried always the old resentful feeling that she would rather
+die than turn to Pa for help! But she knew better now; her children
+should not suffer because of that old girlish pride.
+
+Her mother was gone. Len and his wife, one of the lean, tall Gorman
+girls, were temporarily living with Pa in the old place. Sally had four
+children, Elizabeth, Billy, Jim, and Mary, and lived in the old Mussoo
+place near Dr. Ben. Joe Hawkes was studying medicine, Lydia kept house
+for Pa, of course, and Sally and her father were reconciled. "We just
+started talking to each other when Ma was so ill," wrote Sally, "and
+now he thinks the world and all of the children."
+
+All these changes had filtered to Martie throughout the years. Only a
+few weeks ago a new note had been sounded. Pa had asked Sally if she
+ever heard of her sister; had said that Mary Hawkes was like her Aunt
+Martie, "the cunningest baby of them all."
+
+Wild with hope, Sally had written the beloved sister. It was as if all
+these years of absence had been years of banishment to Sally. Martie
+recognized the unchanging Monroe standard.
+
+She got Sally's letter now, and re-read it. If Pa could send her a few
+hundreds, if she could get the children into Lydia's hands, in the old
+house in the sunken garden, if Teddy and Margar could grow up in the
+beloved fogs and sunshine, the soft climate of home, then how bravely
+she could work, how hopefully she could struggle to get a foothold in
+the world for them! She wrote simply, lovingly, penitently, to her
+father--She was convalescent after serious illness; there were two
+small children; her husband was out of work; could he forgive her and
+help her? In the cold, darkening days, she went about fed with a secret
+hope, an abounding confidence.
+
+But she held the letter a fortnight before sending it. If her father
+refused her, she was desperate indeed. Planning, planning, planning,
+she endured the days. Wallace was not well; wretched with grippe, he
+spent almost the entire day in bed when he was at home, dressing at
+four o'clock and going out of the house without a farewell. Sometimes,
+for two or three nights a week, Martie did not know where he was; his
+friends kept him in money, and made him feel himself a deeply wronged
+and unappreciated man. She could picture him in bars, in cafes, in hot
+hotel rooms seriously talking over a card-table, boasting, threatening.
+
+She dismissed Isabeau Eato with a promise that the girl accepted
+ungraciously.
+
+"If I had the money Isabeau, you should have it; you know that!"
+
+"Yas'm. Hit's what dey all says'm."
+
+"You SHALL have it," Martie promised, with hot cheeks. She breathed
+easier when the girl was gone. She told the grocer that she had written
+her father, and that his bills should be paid; she reminded the big
+rosy man that she had been ill. He listened without comment, cleaning a
+split thumb-nail. The story was not a new one.
+
+No answer came to her letter, and a sick suspicion that no answer would
+come began to trouble her. December was passing. Teddy was careful to
+tell her just what he wanted from Santa Claus. On Christmas Eve she
+asked Wallace, as he was silently going out, for some money.
+
+"I want to get Ted SOMETHING for Christmas, Wallie."
+
+"What does he want?"
+
+"Well, of course he wants a coaster and skates, but that's absurd. I
+thought some sort of a gun--he's gun-mad, and perhaps a book of
+fairy-tales."
+
+With no further comment her husband gave her a five-dollar-bill, and
+went on his way. She saw that he had other bills, and went impulsively
+after him.
+
+"Wallie! Could you let me have a little more? I do need it so!"
+
+Still silent, he took the little roll from his pocket, and gave her
+another five dollars. She saw still a third, and a one dollar bill.
+
+But this was more than her wildest hopes. Joyfully, she went, shabby
+and cold, through the happy streets. She walked four blocks to a new
+market, and bought bread and butter and salt codfish and a candy cane.
+She went into a department store, leaving Teddy to watch the coach on
+the sidewalk, and got him the gun and the book. She gave her grocer
+four, her butcher three dollars, with a "Merry Christmas!" Did both men
+seem a little touched, a little pitying, or was it just the holiday
+air? The streets were crowded, the leaden sky low and menacing; they
+would have a white Christmas.
+
+Teddy hung up his stocking at dark. The big things, he explained, would
+have to go on the floor.
+
+"What big things, my heart?" Martie was toasting bread, eying the
+browned fish cakes with appetite.
+
+"Well, the coaster or the skates!" he elucidated off-hand.
+
+His mother's breast rose on a long sigh. She came to put one arm about
+him, as she knelt beside him on the floor.
+
+"Teddy, dear, didn't Mother tell you that old Santa Claus is poor this
+year? He has so many, many little boys to go to! Wouldn't my boy rather
+that they should all have something, than that some poor little fellows
+should have nothing at all?" She stopped, sick at heart, for the
+child's lip was trembling, and a hot tear fell on her hand.
+
+"But--but I've been good, Mother!" he stammered with a desperate effort
+at self-control.
+
+Well, if he could not be brave, she must be. She began to tell him
+about going to California, to Grandfather's house. Later she put the
+orange, the apple, the gun, with a triangle puzzle given away at the
+drug store, a paper cow from the dairy, and five cents' worth of
+pressed figs, into the little dangling stocking, placed the book beside
+it, and hung the candy cane over all. Mrs. Converse, the doctor's wife,
+had sent a big flannel duck, obviously second-hand, but none the less
+wonderful for that, for Margar; Teddy had not seen it, so it would be
+one more Christmas touch!
+
+And at eight o'clock, as she was putting her kitchen in order, a tired
+driver appeared, clumsily engineering something through the narrow
+hall; a great coaster, its brave red and gold showing through the
+flimsy, snow-wet wrappings.
+
+"Teddy from Dad," Martie, bewildered, read on the card. Not to the
+excited child himself would it bring the joy it gave his mother. Poor
+Wallace--always generous! He had gone straight from her plea for the
+boy's Christmas to spend his money for this. She hoped he would come
+home to-morrow; that they might spend the day together. Some of the
+shops would be open for a few hours; if he brought home money, she
+could manage a chicken, and one of the puddings from the French
+confectioner's--
+
+Another ring at the bell? Martie wiped her hands, and went again to the
+door. A telegram--
+
+She tore and crumpled the wet yellow paper. The wonderful words danced
+before her eyes:
+
+
+Pa says come at once told Lydia he would give you and children home as
+long as he lives sends his love merry Christmas darling
+
+SALLY.
+
+
+Martie went back to the kitchen, and put her head down on the little
+table and cried.
+
+Wallace did not come home for Christmas Day, nor for many days. Teddy
+rejoiced in his coaster while his mother went soberly and swiftly about
+her plans. Perhaps Pa had realized that she did not actually have a
+cent, and was sending a check by mail. The perfect telegram would have
+been just a little more than perfect, if he had said so. But if he were
+not sending money, she must go nevertheless. She must give up this
+house on January tenth, landlord and grocer must trust her for the
+overdue rent and bill. If they would not, well, then they must have her
+arrested; that was all.
+
+The fare to California would be less than two hundred dollars. She was
+going to borrow that from John.
+
+Martie herself was surprised at the calm with which she came to this
+decision. It had all the force of finality to her. She cared for the
+hurt to her pride as little as she cared for what Rose Parker would
+think of her ignominious return, as little as she cared for what the
+world thought of a wife who deliberately left the father of her
+children to his fate.
+
+Early in January she planned to take the children with her, and find
+John in his office. That very day the tickets should be bought. If
+Wallace cared enough for his family to come home in the meantime, she
+would tell him what she was doing. But Martie hoped that he would not.
+The one possible stumbling-block in her path would be Wallace's
+objection; the one thing of which she would not allow herself to think
+was that he MIGHT, by some hideous whim, decide to accompany them.
+Thinking of these things, she went about the process of house-cleaning
+and packing. The beds, the chairs, the china and linen and blankets
+must bring what they could. On the third day of the year, in his room,
+Martie, broom in hand, paused to study Wallace's "chestard." That must
+go, too. It had always been a cheaply constructed article, with one
+missing caster that had to be supplied by a folded wedge of paper.
+Still, in a consignment with other things, it would add something to
+the total. Martie put her hand upon it, and rocked it. As usual, the
+steadying wedge of paper was misplaced.
+
+She stooped to push the prop into position again; noticed that it was a
+piece of notepaper, doubly folded; recognized John Dryden's
+handwriting--
+
+The room whirled about her as she straightened the crumpled and
+discoloured sheet, and smoothed it, and grasped at one glance its
+contents:
+
+DEAR MR. BANNISTER:
+
+I am distressed to hear of Mrs. Bannister's illness, and can readily
+understand that she must not be burdened or troubled now. Please let me
+know how she progresses, and let me be your banker again, if the need
+arises. I am afraid she does not know how to save herself.
+
+Faithfully yours,
+
+JOHN DRYDEN.
+
+The date was mid-December.
+
+Martie read it once, read it again, crushed it in her hand in a spasm
+of shame and pain. She brought the clenched hand that held it against
+her heart, and shut her eyes. Oh, how could he--how could he! To John,
+the last refuge of her wrecked life, he had closed the way in the very
+hour of escape!
+
+For a long time she stood, leaning against the tipped chest, blind and
+deaf to everything but her whirling thoughts. After a while she looked
+apathetically at the clock; time for Margar's toast and boiled egg. She
+must finish in here; the baby would be waking.
+
+Somehow she got through the cold, silent afternoon. She felt as if she
+were bleeding internally; as if the crimson stain from her shaken heart
+might ooze through her faded gingham. She must get the children into
+the fresh air before the snow fell.
+
+Out of doors a silence reigned. A steady, cold wind, tasting already of
+snow, was blowing. The streets were almost deserted. Martie pushed the
+carriage briskly, and the sharp air brought colour to her cheeks, and a
+sort of desperate philosophy to her thoughts. Waiting for the
+prescription for Margar's croup, with the baby in her lap, Martie saw
+herself in a long mirror. The blooming young mother, the rosy, lovely
+children, could not but make a heartening picture. Margar's little
+gaitered legs, her bright face under the shabby, fur-rimmed cap;
+Teddy's sturdy straight little shoulders and his dark blue, intelligent
+eyes; these were Martie's riches. Were not comfort and surety well lost
+for them at twenty-seven? At thirty-seven, at forty-seven, there would
+be a different reckoning.
+
+No woman's life was affected, surely, by a trifle like the tourist fare
+to California, she told herself sensibly. If the money was not to come
+from John, it must be forthcoming in some other way, if not this month,
+then next month, or the next still. Perhaps she would still go to John,
+and tell him the whole story.
+
+Pondering, planning, she went back to the house, her spirits sinking as
+the warm air smote her, the odour of close rooms, and of the soaking
+little garments in the kitchen tub. Wallace had come in, had flung
+himself across his bed, and was asleep.
+
+Martie merely glanced at him before she set about the daily routine of
+undressing the baby, setting the table, getting a simple supper for
+Teddy and herself. No matter! It was only a question of a little time,
+now. In ten days, in two weeks, she would be on the train; the new
+fortune hazarded. The snoring sleeper little dreamed that some of her
+things were packed, some of the children's things packed, that Margar's
+best coat had been sent to the laundry, with the Western trip in view;
+that a furniture man had been interviewed as to the disposal of the
+chairs and tables.
+
+At six o'clock Margar, with her bottle, was tucked away in the front
+room, and Martie and Teddy sat down to their meal. Roused perhaps by
+the clatter of dishes, Wallace came from the bedroom to the kitchen
+door, and stood looking in.
+
+"Wallace," Martie said without preamble, "why did you never tell me
+that you borrowed money from Mr. Dryden?"
+
+He stared at her stupidly, still sleepy, and taken unawares.
+
+"He told you, huh?" he said heavily, after a pause.
+
+"I found his note!" Martie said, beginning to breathe quickly.
+
+Without glancing at Wallace, she put a buttered slice of bread before
+Teddy.
+
+"I didn't want to distress you with it, Mart," Wallace said weakly.
+
+"Distress me!" his wife echoed with a bitter laugh.
+
+"Of course, some of it is paid back," Wallace added unconvincingly.
+Martie shot him a quick, distrustful glance. Ah, if she could believe
+him! "I have his note acknowledging half of it, seventy-five," added
+Wallace more confidently. "I'll show it to you!"
+
+"I wish you would!" Martie said in cold incredulity. Teddy, deceived by
+his mother's dispassionate tone, gave Wallace a warm little smile,
+embellished by bread and milk.
+
+"I guess you've been wondering where I was?" ventured Wallace, rubbing
+one big bare foot with the other, and hunching his shoulders in his
+disreputable wrapper. Unshaven, unbrushed, he gave a luxurious yawn.
+
+"No matter!" Martie said, shrugging. She poured her tea, noticed that
+her fingernails were neglected, and sighed.
+
+"I don't see why you take that attitude, Mart," Wallace said mildly,
+sitting down. "In the first place, I sent you a letter day before
+yesterday, which Thompson didn't mail--"
+
+"Really!" said Martie, the seething bitterness within her making hand
+and voice tremble.
+
+"I have the deuce of a cold!" Wallace suggested tentatively. His wife
+did not comment, or show in any way that she had heard him. "I know
+what you think I've been doing," he went on. "But for once, you're
+wrong. A lot of us have just been down at Joe's in the country. His
+wife's away, and we just cooked and walked and played cards--and I sat
+in luck, too!" He opened the wallet he held in his hands, showing a
+little roll of dirty bills, and Martie was ashamed of the instant
+softening of her heart. She wanted money so badly! "I was coming home
+Monday," pursued Wallace, conscious that he was gaining ground, "but
+this damn cold hit me, and the boys made me stay in bed."
+
+"Will you have some tea?" Martie asked reluctantly. He responded
+instantly to her softened tone.
+
+"I WOULD like some tea. I've been feeling rotten! And say, Mart," he
+had drawn up to the table now, and had one wrappered arm about Teddy,
+"say, Mart," he said eagerly, "listen! This'll interest you. Thompson's
+brother-in-law, Bill Buffington, was there; he's an awfully nice
+fellow; he's got coffee interests in Costa Rica. We talked a lot, we
+hit it off awfully well, and he thinks there's a dandy chance for me
+down there! He says he could get me twenty jobs, and he wants me to go
+back when he goes--"
+
+"But, Wallace--" Martie's quick enthusiasm was firing. "But what about
+the children?"
+
+"Why, they'd come along. Buff says piles of Americans down there have
+children, you just have to dress 'em light--"
+
+"And feed them light; that's the most important!" Martie added eagerly.
+
+"Sure. And I get my transportation, and you only half fare, so you see
+there's not much to that!"
+
+"Wallace!" The world was changing. "And what would you do?"
+
+"Checking cargoes, and managing things generally. We get a house, and
+he says the place is alive with servants. And he asked if you were the
+sort of woman who would take in a few boarders; he says the men there
+are crazy for American cooking, and that you could have all you'd
+take--"
+
+"Oh, I would!" Martie said excitedly. "I'd have nothing else to do, you
+know! Oh, Wallie, I am delighted about this! I am so sick of this
+city!" she added, smiling tremulously. "I am so sick of cold and dirt
+and worry!"
+
+"Well," he smiled a little shamefacedly, "one thing you'll like. No
+booze down there. Buff says there's nothing in it; it can't be done. He
+says that's the quickest way for a man to FINISH himself!"
+
+The kitchen had been brightening for Martie with the swift changes of a
+stage sunrise. Now the colour came to her face, and the happy tears to
+her eyes. For the first time in many months she went into her husband's
+arms, and put her own arms about his neck, and her cheek against his,
+in the happy fashion of years ago.
+
+"Oh, Wallie, dear! We'll begin all over again. We'll get away, on the
+steamer, and make a home and a life for ourselves!"
+
+"Don't you WANT to go, Moth'?" Teddy asked anxiously. Martie laughed as
+she wiped her eyes.
+
+"Crying for joy, Ted," she told him. "Don't sit there sneezing,
+Wallie," she added in her ordinary tone. Her husband asked her,
+dutifully, if she would object to his mixing a hot whisky lemonade for
+his cold. After a second's hesitation she said no, and it was mixed,
+and shortly afterward Wallace went to bed and to sleep. At eight Martie
+tucked Teddy into bed, straightening the clothes over Margar before she
+went into the dining room for an hour of solitaire.
+
+"Mrs. Bannister's Boarding House"; she liked the sound. The men would
+tell each other that it was luck to get into Mrs. Bannister's. White
+shoes--thin white gowns--she must be businesslike--bills and
+receipts--and terms dignified, but not exorbitant--when Ted was old
+enough for boarding-school--say twelve--but of course they could tell
+better about that later on!
+
+A little sound from the front bedroom brought her to her feet, fright
+clutching her heart. Margar was croupy again!
+
+It was a sufficiently familiar emergency, but Martie never grew used to
+it. She ran to the child's side, catching up the new bottle of
+medicine. A hideous paroxysm subsided as she took the baby in her arms,
+but Margar sank back so heavily exhausted that no coaxing persuaded her
+to open her eyes, or to do more than reject with fretful little lips
+the medicine spoon. She is very ill--Martie said to herself fearfully.
+She flew to her husband's side.
+
+"Wallie--I hate to wake you! But Margar is croupy, and I'm going to run
+for Dr. Converse. Light the croup kettle, will you, I won't be a
+moment!"
+
+His daughter was the core of Wallace's heart. He was instantly alert.
+
+"Here, let me go, Mart! I'll get something on--"
+
+"No, no, I'm dressed! But look at her, Wallie," Martie said, as they
+came together to stand by the crib. "I don't like the way she's
+breathing--"
+
+She looked eagerly at his face, but saw only her own disquiet reflected
+there.
+
+"Get the doctor," he said, tucking the blankets about the shabby little
+double-gown. "I'll keep her warm--"
+
+A moment later Martie, buttoned into her old squirrel-lined coat, was
+in the quiet, deserted street, which was being muffled deeper and
+deeper in the softly falling snow. Steps, areas, fences, were alike
+furred in soft white, old gratings wore an exquisite coating over their
+dingy filigree. The snow was coming down evenly, untouched by wind, the
+flakes twisting like long ropes against the street lights. A gang of
+men were talking and clanking shovels on the car tracks; an ambulance
+thudded by, the wheels grating and slipping on the snow.
+
+Dr. and Mrs. Converse were in their dining room, a pleasant, shabby
+room smelling of musk, and with an old oil painting of fruit, a cut
+watermelon, peaches and grapes, a fringed napkin and a glass of red
+wine, over the curved black marble mantel. The old man was enjoying a
+late supper, but struggled into his great coat cheerfully enough. Mrs.
+Converse tried to persuade Martie to have just a sip of sherry, but
+Martie was frantic to be gone. In a moment she and the old man were on
+their way, through the silent, falling snow again, and in her own
+hallway, and she was crying to Wallace: "How is she?"
+
+The room was steamy with the fumes of the croup kettle; Wallace, the
+child in his arms, met them with a face of terror. Both men bent over
+the baby.
+
+"She seems all right again now," said Wallace in a sharp whisper, "but
+right after you left--my God, I thought she would choke!"
+
+Martie watched the doctor's face, amazement and fright paralyzing every
+sense but sight. The old man's tender, clever hands rested for a moment
+on the little double-gown.
+
+"Well, poor little girl!" he said, softly, after a moment of pulsing
+silence. He straightened up, and looked at Martie. "Gone," he said
+simply. "She died in her father's arms."
+
+"Gone!" Martie echoed. The quiet word fell into a void of silence.
+Father and mother stood transfixed, looking upon each other. Martie was
+panting like a runner, Wallace seemed dazed. They stood so a long time.
+
+Relief came first to Wallace; for as they laid the tiny form on the
+bed, and arranged the shabby little gown about it, he suddenly fell
+upon his knees, and flung one arm about his child and burst into bitter
+crying. But Martie moved about, mute, unhearing, her mouth fallen a
+little open, her breath still coming hard. She answered the doctor's
+suggestions only after a moment's frowning concentration--what did he
+say?
+
+After a while he was gone, and Wallace was persuaded to go to bed
+again, Teddy tucked in beside him. Then Martie lowered the light in
+what had been the children's room, and knelt beside her dead.
+
+The snow was still falling with a gentle, ticking sound against the
+window. Muffled whistles sounded on the river; the night was so stilled
+that the clanking of shovels and the noise of voices came clearly from
+the car-tracks at the corner.
+
+Hour after hour went by. Martie knelt on; she was not conscious of
+grief or pain; she was not conscious of the world that would wake in
+the morning, and go about its business, and of the bright sun that
+would blaze out upon the snow. There was no world, no sun, no protest,
+and no hope. There was only the question: Why?
+
+In the soft flicker of the gaslight Margar lay in unearthly beauty, the
+shadow of her dark eyelashes touching her cheek, a smile lingering on
+her baby mouth. She had been such a happy baby; Martie had loved to
+rumple and kiss the aureole of bright hair that framed the sleeping
+face.
+
+The old double-gown--with the middle button that did not match--Martie
+had ironed only yesterday. She would not iron it again. The rag doll,
+and the strings of spools, and the shabby high-chair where Margar sat
+curling her little bare toes on summer mornings; these must vanish. The
+little feet were still. Gone!
+
+Gone, in an hour, all the dreaming and hoping. No Margar in a cleaned
+coat would run about the decks of the steamer--
+
+Martie pressed her hand over her dry and burning eyes. She wondered
+that she could think of these things and not go mad.
+
+The days went by; time did not stop. Wallace remained ill; Teddy had a
+cold, too. Mrs. Converse and John and Adele were there, all
+sympathetic, all helpful. They were telling Martie that she must keep
+up for the others. She must drink this; she must lie down.
+
+Presently the front room, so terribly occupied, was more terribly
+empty. Little Margaret Bannister was laid beside little Mary and Rose
+and Paul Converse at Mount Kisco. Children, many of them, died thus
+every year, and life went on. Martie had the perfect memory, and the
+memory of Adele's tears, of Mrs. Converse's tears, of John's agony of
+sympathy.
+
+Then they all went out of her life as suddenly as they had entered it.
+Only the old doctor came steadily, because of Teddy's cold and
+Wallace's cold. Martie worked over their trays, read fairy-tales to
+Teddy, read the newspaper to Wallace, said that she felt well, she HAD
+eaten a good lunch, she WAS sleeping well.
+
+When the first suspicion of Wallace's condition came to her she was
+standing in the kitchen, waiting for a kettle to boil, and staring
+dully out into a world of frozen bareness. Margaret had been with her a
+week ago; a week ago it had been her privilege to catch the warm little
+form to her heart, to kiss the aureole of gold, to listen to the shaken
+gurgle of baby laughter--
+
+The doctor came out from Wallace's room; Martie, still wrapped in her
+thoughts, listened to him absently.... pneumonia. Suddenly she came to
+herself with a shock, repeating the word. Pneumonia? What was he
+saying? But, Doctor--but Doctor--is Mr. Bannister so ill?
+
+He was very ill; gravely ill. The fact that taken in time, and fought
+with every weapon, the disease had gained, augured badly. Martie
+listened in stupefaction.
+
+She suggested a nurse. The old doctor smiled at her affectionately.
+Perhaps to-morrow, if he was no better, they might consider it.
+Meanwhile, he was in excellent hands.
+
+A strange, silent day followed. Martie looked at her husband now with
+that augmented concern that such a warning brings. He slept, waked,
+smiled at her, was not hungry. His big hand, when she touched it, was
+hot. Teddy, coughing, and with oil-saturated flannel over his chest,
+played with his blocks and listened to fairy-tales. Outside, a bitter
+cold wind swept the empty streets. Her husband ill, perhaps dying,
+Margar gone; it was all unreal and unconvincing.
+
+At four o'clock the doctor came back, and at five the nurse pleasantly
+took possession of the sick room. She was a sensible New England woman,
+who cooked potatoes in an amazing way for Teddy's supper, and taught
+Martie a new solitaire in the still watches of the night. Martie was
+anxious to make her comfortable; she must lie down; and she must be
+sure to get out into the fresh air to-morrow afternoon.
+
+But Miss Swann did not leave her case the next day, a Sunday, and
+Martie, awed and silent, spent the day beside the bed. Wallace died at
+five o'clock.
+
+He wandered in a light fever that morning, and at two o'clock fell into
+the stupor that was not to end in this world. But Martie had, to
+treasure, the memory of the early morning when she slipped quietly into
+the room that was orderly, dimly lighted, and odorous of drugs now. He
+was awake then, his eyes found her, and he smiled as she knelt beside
+him.
+
+"Better?" she said softly.
+
+The big head nodded almost imperceptibly. He moistened his lips.
+
+"I'm all right," he said voicelessly. "Bad--bad cold!"
+
+He shut his eyes, and with them shut, added in a whisper: "Sweet, sweet
+woman, Martie! Remember that day--in Pittsville--when you had on--your
+brother's--coat? Mabel--and old Jesse--!"
+
+Heavenly tears rushed to her eyes; she felt the yielding of her frozen
+heart. She caught his hand to her lips, bowing her face over it.
+
+"Ah, Wallace dear! We were happy then! We'll go back--back to that
+time--and we'll start fresh!"
+
+A long silence. Then he opened his eyes, found her, with a start, as if
+he had not been quite sure what those opening eyes would see, and
+smiled sleepily.
+
+"I'll make it--up to you, Martie!" he said heavily She had her arms
+about him as he sank into unnatural sleep. At eight, whispering in the
+kitchen with John, who had come for Teddy, she said that Wallie was
+better; and busy with coffee and toast for Miss Swann, she began to
+plan for Costa Rica. Beaten, crushed, purified by fire, healed by
+tears, she was ready for life again.
+
+But that was not to be. Wallace was dead, and those who gathered about
+Martie wondered that she wept for her husband more than for her child.
+
+Wept for the wasted life, perhaps, and for the needless suffering and
+sorrow. But even in the first hours of her widowhood Martie's heart
+knew a deep and passionate relief. Vague and menacing as was the
+future, stretching before her, she knew that she would never wish
+Wallace back.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK III
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+There were times when Martie found it difficult to believe that she had
+ever been away from Monroe at all; evenings, when she and Lydia sat
+talking in the shabby sitting room of the old house; or mornings when
+she fed the chickens in the soft fog under the willow trees of the
+yard. Len and Sally were married and gone, dear Ma was gone, and Belle
+had married, too; a tall gaunt woman called Pauline was in her place.
+
+But these things might all have transpired without touching Martie's
+own life directly. She might still, in many ways, have been the
+dreaming, ambitious, helpless girl of seven years ago. Sometimes the
+realization of all she had endured came to her with an odd sense of
+shock. She would glance down at her thin hand, in its black cuff, and
+fall into deep musing, her face grave and weary. Or she would call
+Teddy from his play, and hold his warm little body close, staring at
+him with a look that always made the child uneasy. Third Avenue, barred
+with sun and shade, in the early summer mornings; Broadway on a snowy
+winter afternoon with the theatre crowd streaming up and down, spring
+and babies taking possession of the parks--were these all a dream?
+
+No; she had gained something in the hard years; she saw that more and
+more. Her very widowhood to Monroe had the stamp of absolute
+respectability. Even Pa was changed toward her; or was it that she was
+changed toward him? However caused, in their relationship there was a
+fundamental change.
+
+Pa had been a figure of power and tyranny seven years ago. Now he
+seemed to Martie only an unreasonable, unattractive old man, thwarted
+in his old age in everything his heart desired. Lydia was still
+tremblingly filial in her attitude toward Pa, but Martie at once
+assumed the maternal. She scolded him, listened to him, and dictated to
+him, and he liked it. Martie had never loved him as Lydia did; she had
+defied and disobeyed and deserted him, yet he transferred his
+allegiance to her now, and clung to her helplessly.
+
+He liked to have her walk down to his office beside him in the
+mornings, in her plain black. While they walked he pointed out various
+pieces of property, and told her how cheaply they had been sold forty
+years ago. The whole post-office block had gone for seven hundred
+dollars, the hotel site had been Mason's cow-yard! Old man Sark had
+lived there, and had refused to put black on his house when Lincoln was
+assassinated.
+
+"And didn't he go to jail for that, Pa?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am, he did!"
+
+"But YOU--"
+
+"I was in jail, too." Malcolm Monroe would chuckle under his now gray
+moustache that was yellowed with tobacco stains. "Yes, sir, I rounded
+up some of the boys, the Twentyonesters, we called ourselves, and we
+led a riot 'round this town! The ringleaders were arrested, but that
+was merely a form--merely a form!"
+
+"You must have been a terror, Pa."
+
+"Well--well, I had a good deal of your grandmother's spirit! And I
+suppose they rather looked to me to set the pace--"
+
+Smiling, they would go along in the sunlight, past the little homes
+where babies had been turned out into grassy yards, past the straggling
+stables and the smithy, and the fire-house, and the office of the
+weekly Zeus. There was more than one garage in Monroe now and the
+squared noses of Ford cars were at home everywhere. Mallon's Hardware
+Emporium, the Five-and-Ten-Cent Store, still with its pillars of
+twisted handkerchiefs, Mason and White's--how familiar they were! And
+the old Bank, with its wide windows and double roller shades was
+familiar, too. Martie learned that the Bank had duly worn black a year
+or two ago for kindly old Colonel Frost; his name had been obliterated
+from the big window, and Clifford Frost was vice-president now.
+
+"One death is two deaths, they say," Lydia had sighed, telling Martie
+of the Colonel's death. "You know Cliff's wife died only two months
+before his father did. That was a terrible thing! Her little girl was
+seven years old, and she was going to have another--"
+
+When Martie, in the early afternoon of a warm sweet day on
+mid-February, had stepped from the train, with Teddy's little fingers
+held tight in hers, Sally's face, running over with tears and smiles,
+had been the first she found. Curiously changed, yet wonderfully
+familiar, the sisters had clung together, hardly knowing how to begin
+their friendship again after six long years. There were big things to
+say, but they said the little things. They talked about the trip and
+the warm weather that had brought the buttercups so soon, and the case
+that had kept Pa on jury duty in Pittsville.
+
+Len--rather pompous, and with a moustache!--explained why his wife
+could not be there: the two-year-old daughter was not very well. Martie
+questioned him eagerly of his two children. Both girls, Len said
+gloomily; he asked his sister if she realized that there was not a
+Monroe yet.
+
+Lydia wept a few tears; "Martie, dear, to see you in black!" and
+Martie's eyes watered, and her lip shook.
+
+"Grace and all the others would have come," Sally said quickly, "but we
+knew you'd be tired, and then it's homecoming, Martie, and you'll have
+lots of time to see us all!"
+
+She introduced Elizabeth, a lovely, fly-away child with bright loose
+hair, and Billy, a freckled, ordinary-looking boy, who gave his aunt a
+beautiful smile from large, dark eyes. The others were left with
+"Mother"--Joe's mother.
+
+"But, Sally, you're so fat!"
+
+"And, Mart, you're so thin!"
+
+"Never mind; it's becoming to you, Sally. You look still like a little
+girl. Really, you do! And how's Joe?"
+
+"Oh, Joe's lovely. I went down and spent a week with him. I had the
+choice of that or a spring suit, and I took that!"
+
+"Went--but where is he? I suppose he hasn't been sent to San Quentin?"
+
+"Oh, Martie, don't! You know Russell Harrison, 'Dutch's' cousin, that
+used to play with Len, really WAS sent there!"
+
+"For Heaven's sake, what for?"
+
+"Well, Hugh Wilson had some trouble with Paul King, and--it was about
+money--and Russell Harrison went to Hughie and told him--"
+
+So the conversation was diverted over and over again; and the
+inessential things were said, and the important ones forgotten. Len had
+borrowed the firm's motor car, and they all got in. Martie, used to
+Wallace's careless magnificence, was accustomed enough to this mode of
+travel, but she saw that it was a cause of great excitement to the
+children, and even to Sally.
+
+"You say the 'firm,' Len--I'll never get used to my little brother with
+a moustache! What do you mean by the 'firm?'" asked Martie. "My
+goodness--goodness--goodness, there's the Library and Lacey's!" she
+added, her eyes eagerly roving the streets.
+
+"Miss Fanny is still there; she always speaks so affectionately of you,
+Martie," said Lydia eagerly and tremulously. Martie perceived that in
+some mysterious way Lydia was ill at ease. Lydia did not quite know how
+to deal with a younger sister who was yet a widow, and had lived in New
+York.
+
+"There was an awful lot of talk about getting her out of the Library,"
+contributed Sally; "they said the Streets were at the back of it; they
+wanted to put a man in! There was the greatest excitement; we all went
+down to the Town Hall and listened to the speeches--it was terrific! I
+guess the Streets and their crowd felt pretty small, because they
+got--what was it, Len?"
+
+"Seventeen votes out of one hundred and eleven!" Len said, not moving
+his eyes from the road before him.
+
+"My house is right down there, next door to Uncle Ben's," said Sally,
+craning her neck suddenly. "You can't see it, but no matter; there's
+lots of time! Here's the Hawkes's place; remember that?"
+
+"I remember everything," Martie said, smiling. "We're nearly home!"
+
+The old Monroe house looked shabby, even in the spring green. Martie
+had seen the deeper, fresher green of the East for six successive
+springs. The eucalyptus trees wore their tassels, the willows' fresh
+foliage had sprung over the old rusty leaves. A raw gateway had been
+cut, out by the old barn, into Clipper Lane, and a driveway filled in.
+Tired, confused, train-sick, Martie got down into the old yard, and the
+old atmosphere enveloped her like a garment. The fuchsia bushes, the
+marguerites so green on top, so brown and dry under their crown of
+fresh life, the heliotrope sprawling against the peeling boards under
+the dining-room windows, and tacked in place with strips of kid
+glove--how well she knew them!
+
+They went in the side door, and through the dark dining room, odorous
+of vegetable soup and bread and butter. An unearthly quiet held the
+house. Pa's door was closed; Martie imagined the room darker and more
+grim than ever.
+
+Lydia had given her her old room; the room in which she and Sally had
+grown to womanhood. It was as clean and bare as a hotel room. Lydia and
+Sally had discussed the advisability of a bowl of flowers, but had
+decided flowers might remind poor Mart of funerals. Martie remembered
+the counterpane on the bed and the limp madras curtains at the windows.
+She put her gloves in a bureau drawer lined with folded newspaper, and
+hung her wraps in the square closet that was, for some unimaginable
+reason, a step higher than the room.
+
+Lydia sat on the bed, and Sally on a chair, while Martie slowly moved
+about her new domain. The children had gone into the yard, 'Lizabeth
+and Billy charged not to let their little cousin get his clothes dirty;
+when the trunks came, with his overalls, he could get as dirty as he
+pleased.
+
+The soiled, tumbled contents of the hand bag, after the five days'
+trip, filled Martie with a sort of weary concern. She stood, puzzling
+vaguely over the damp washcloth that was wrapped about a cake of soap,
+the magazines of which she had grown so tired, the rumpled night-wear.
+
+"I suppose I should hang these up; we may not get the trunks to-night."
+
+"Oh, you will!" Lydia reassured her. A certain blankness fell on them
+all. It was the glaring spring hour of four o'clock; not lunch time,
+nor dinner time, nor bed time, nor time to go to market. Suddenly a
+tear fell on Martie's hand; she sniffed.
+
+"Ah, don't, Mart!" Lydia said, fumbling for her own handkerchief. "We
+know--we know how hard it is! Your husband, and Ma not here to welcome
+you--"
+
+The sisters cried together.
+
+But she slept well in the old walnut bed, and enjoyed a delicious,
+unfamiliar leisure the next morning, when Teddy was turned out to the
+safety of the yard, and Pa, after paternally reassuring her as to her
+welcome and pompously reiterating that her old father's home was hers
+for the rest of her life, was gone. She and Lydia talked deeply over
+the breakfast table, while Pauline rattled dishes in the kitchen and a
+soft fog pressed against the windows.
+
+Martie had said that she was going over to Sally's immediately after
+breakfast, but, in the old way, time drifted by. She went upstairs to
+make her bed, and she and Lydia talked again, from doorway to doorway.
+When they were finally dressed to walk down town, Lydia said that she
+might as well go to market first; they could stop at Sally's afterward.
+
+Teddy galloped and curveted about them; Monroe enchanted Teddy. The
+sunshine was just pushing back the fog, and the low hills all about the
+town were coming into view, when Martie took her son in to meet Miss
+Fanny.
+
+Grayer and thinner, the librarian was otherwise unchanged. The old
+strong, coarse voice, the old plain dress, serviceable and comfortable,
+the old delighted affection. Miss Fanny wore glasses now; she beamed
+upon Teddy as she put them on, after frankly wiping her eyes.
+
+She made a little fuss about Martie's joining the Library, so that
+Teddy could take home "Davy and the Goblin."
+
+They went out into the warming, drying Main Street again; everywhere
+Martie was welcomed. In the shops and on the street humble old friends
+eyed her black respectfully.
+
+The nervousness that she had felt about coming back began to melt like
+the mist itself. She had dreaded Monroe's old standards, dreaded Rose
+and Len, and the effect her poverty must have on them. Now she began to
+see that Rose mattered as little here as she had mattered when Martie
+was struggling in East Twenty-sixth Street. Rose "went" with the Frosts
+and the Streets and the Pattersons now. Her intimate friend was Dr.
+Ellis's wife, a girl from San Francisco.
+
+"Shall we go in for a minute, and make a little visit?" said Lydia, as
+she had said years ago, whenever they passed the church. Martie nodded.
+They creaked into the barnlike shabbiness of the edifice; the little
+red light twinkled silently before the altar. Clara Baxter was
+tiptoeing to and fro with vases. Teddy twisted and turned, had to be
+bumped to his knees, was warned in a whisper that he must not talk.
+
+Father Martin was not well; he had an assistant, Lydia said. The bishop
+wanted to establish a convent here, and old Mrs. Hanson had left eleven
+hundred dollars for it. Gertie Hanson lived in Fruitvale; she was
+married to a widower. She had threatened to fight the will, but people
+said that she got quite a lot of money; the Hansons were richer than
+any one thought. Anyway, she had not put up a gravestone to her mother
+yet, and Alice Clark said that Gertie had said that she couldn't afford
+it.
+
+"Why, that house must have been worth something!" Martie commented,
+picking up the threads with interest.
+
+"Well, wouldn't you think so!" Lydia said eagerly.
+
+The morning had been so wasted that Sally was in a whirl of
+dinner-getting when they reached her house. She had her hearty meal at
+noon on the children's account; her little kitchen was filled with
+smoke and noise. To-day she had masses of rather dark, mushy boiled
+rice, stewed neck of lamb, apples, and hot biscuits. Martie, fresh from
+New York's campaign of dietetic education, reflected that it was rather
+unusual fare for small children, but Sally's quartette was
+healthy-looking enough, and full of life and excitement. 'Lizabeth set
+the table; there was great running about, and dragging of chairs.
+
+Martie studied her sister with amused admiration. There was small room
+for maternal vapours in Sally's busy life. Her matter-of-fact voice
+ruled the confusion.
+
+"Jim, you do as 'Lizabeth tells you, or you'll get another whipping,
+sir! Pour that milk into the pitcher, Brother. Put on both sugar bowls,
+darling; Brother likes the brown. Martie, dearest, I am ashamed of this
+muss, but in two minutes I'll have them all started--there's
+baby--'Lizabeth, there's baby; you'll have to go up--"
+
+"I'll go up!" Lydia and Martie said together. Martie went through the
+bare little hallways upstairs, and peeped into shabby bedrooms full of
+small beds and dangling nightgowns and broken toys.
+
+Mary was sitting up in her crib, tumbled, red-cheeked, tears hanging on
+her lashes. The room was darkened for her nap; she wore a worn little
+discoloured wrapper; she clung to her rag doll. Martie, with deathly
+weakness sweeping over her, smiled, and spoke to her. The baby eyed her
+curiously, but she was not afraid. Martie picked her up, and stood
+there holding her, while the knife turned and twisted in her heart.
+
+After a while she wrapped a blanket about Mary, and carried her
+downstairs. Sally saw that Martie's face was ashen, and she knew why.
+Lydia saw nothing. Lydia would have said that Martie had placed poor
+Wallace's picture on her bureau that morning, and had talked about him,
+calmly and dry-eyed; so why should she feel so much more for her baby?
+Teddy had been a little strange, if eagerly friendly, with his other
+cousins; but he knew how to treat Mary. He picked up the things she
+threw down from her high-chair, and tickled her, and made her laugh.
+
+"If this elaborate and formal meal is dinner, Sally dear, what is
+supper?"
+
+"Oh, Martie, it's so delicious to hear you again! Why, supper will be
+apple sauce and bread and butter and milk, and gingerbread and cookies.
+It's the same the year round! I like it, really; after we go up to Pa's
+to supper the children don't sleep well, and neither do I."
+
+"You haven't told me yet where Joe is."
+
+"Oh, I know, and I WILL! We get talking, and somehow there's so much to
+say. Why, Joe's finishing his course at Cooper's College in San
+Francisco; he'll graduate this May. Dr. J. F. Hawkes; isn't that fun!"
+
+"A regular doctor!" Martie exclaimed. "But--but is he going to BE one?"
+
+"BE one! I should think he is!" Sally announced proudly. "Uncle Ben
+says he's a born doctor--"
+
+"And how long has it been UNCLE Ben?"
+
+"Oh, 'Lizabeth adopted him. He adores the children."
+
+"He loaned Joe the money," Lydia said with her old air of delicately
+emphasizing an unsavoury truth.
+
+Sally gave her younger sister a rather odd look at this, but she did
+not deny the statement.
+
+"And who keeps the quartette going?" asked Martie, glancing about.
+
+"Joe's people; and Pa does send barrels of apples and things, doesn't
+he, Sally?" Lydia supplied.
+
+"Oh, yes; we only pay twelve dollars rent, and we live very cheaply!"
+Sally said cheerfully, with another mysterious look.
+
+A day or two later, when they were alone, she told Martie the whole
+truth.
+
+"It's Uncle Ben, of course, Mart; you remember his old offer, if ever I
+had any children? He pays me twelve hundred a year for my four. Nobody
+knows it, not even Lyd. People would only talk, you know, and it's none
+of their affair. It's his fad, you know. We married young, and Joe had
+no profession. Uncle Ben thinks the State ought to pay women for
+bearing children. He says it's their business in life. Women are taking
+jobs, foregoing marriage, and the nation is being robbed of citizens.
+He believes that the hardest kind of work is the raising of children,
+and the women who do it for the State ought to be paid by the State. He
+does it for me, and I feel as if he was a relation. It's meant
+everything to Joe and me, and the children, too. Sometimes, when I stop
+to think of it, it is a little queer, but--when you think of the way
+people DO spend money, for orchids or old books or rugs--it's natural
+after all! He simply invests in citizens, that's what he says. I would
+have had them anyway, but I suppose, indeed I know, Mart, that there
+are lots of women who wouldn't!"
+
+"And is he financing Joe, too?"
+
+"Oh, no, indeed! Uncle Ben never speaks of money to me; I don't ever
+get one cent except my regular allowance. Why, when Joe was ill, and
+one of the babies--Billy, it was--was coming, he came in to see me now
+and then, but he never said boo about helping! Joe is working his way;
+he's chauffeur for Dr. Houston; that's something else nobody knows."
+
+"I think that's magnificent of Joe!" Martie said, her face glowing.
+
+"He graduates this year," Sally said proudly, "and then I think he will
+start here. For a long time we thought we'd have to move away then,
+because every one remembers little Joe Hawkes delivering papers, and
+working in the express office. But now that the hospital, up toward the
+Archer place, is really going to be built, Uncle Ben says that Joe can
+get a position there. It's Dr. Knowles's hospital, and Uncle Ben is his
+best friend. Of course that's big luck for Joe."
+
+"Not so much luck," Martie said generously, "as that Joe has worked
+awfully hard, and done well."
+
+"Oh, you don't know how hard, Mart! And loving us all as he does, too,
+and being away from us!" Sally agreed fervently. "But if he really gets
+that position, with my hundred, we'll be rich! We'll have to keep a
+Ford, Mart; won't that be fun?"
+
+"Dr. Ben might die, Sally," Martie suggested.
+
+"That wouldn't make any difference," the older sister said composedly.
+"I have the actual deeds--the titles, whatever they are--to the
+property MY money comes from. He gave me them a year ago, when he was
+sixty. I certainly dread the talk there'll be when his will comes to
+light, but Joe will be here then, and Joe isn't afraid of any one."
+
+"He's done for you what Pa should have done," Martie mused.
+
+"Oh, well, Pa did his best for us, Mart." Sally said dutifully; "he
+gave us a good home--"
+
+"WAS it a good home?" Martie questioned mildly.
+
+"It was a much finer home than MY children have, Mart."
+
+"As far as walls and tables and silver spoons, I suppose it was. But,
+Sally, there's no child alive who has a sweeter atmosphere than
+this--always with mother, always learning, and always considered! Why,
+my boy is blooming already in it!"
+
+Sally's face flushed with pleasure.
+
+"Martie, you make me so proud!"
+
+"If you can only keep it up, Sally. With me it doesn't matter so much,
+because I've only the one, and no husband whose claims might interfere.
+But when 'Lizabeth and Mary, as well as the boys, are older--"
+
+"You mean--always let them have their friends at the house, and so on?"
+Sally asked slowly.
+
+"Yes, but more than that! Let them feel as much a part of the world as
+the boys do. Put them into any work--only make them respect it!"
+
+"Pa might have helped us, only neither you nor I, nor Lyd, ever showed
+the least interest in work," Sally submitted thoughtfully.
+
+"Neither did Len--but he MADE Len!"
+
+"Yes, I see what you mean," Sally admitted with an awakening face. "But
+we would have thought he was pretty stern, Mart," she added.
+
+"Just as children do when they have to learn to read and write,"
+countered Martie. "Don't you see?"
+
+Sally did not see, but she was glad to see Martie's interest. She told
+Lydia later that Martie really seemed better and more like her old
+self, even in these few days.
+
+With almost all the women of Monroe, Lydia now considered Martie's life
+a thing accomplished, and boldly accomplished. To leave home, to marry,
+to have children in a strange city, to be honorably widowed and to
+return to her father's home, and rear her child in seclusion and
+content; this was more than fell to the lot of many women. Lydia
+listened with actual shudders to Martie's casually dropped revelations.
+
+"This John Dryden that I told you about, Lyd--the man who wrote the
+play that failed--was anxious for me to go on with the Curley
+boarding-house," Martie said one day, "and sometimes now I think I
+should have done so."
+
+"Good heavens!" Lydia, smoothing the thin old blankets on Martie's
+wide, flat bed, stopped aghast. "But why should you--Pa is more than
+willing to have you here!"
+
+"I know, darling. But what really deterred me was not so much Pa's
+generosity, but the fact that I would have had to lease the property
+for three years; George Curley wanted to be rid of the responsibility.
+And to really make the thing a success, I should have had the adjoining
+house, too; that would have been about four thousand rent."
+
+"Four thousand--Martie, you would have been crazy!"
+
+Martie, tinkling pins into a saucer on the bureau, opening the upper
+drawer to sweep her brush and comb into it, and jerking the limp linen
+scarf straight, only smiled and shrugged in answer. She had been
+widowed three months, and already reviving energy and self-confidence
+were running in her veins. Already she realized that it had been a
+mistake to accept her father's hospitality in the first panic of being
+dependent. However graceful and dignified her position was to the
+outsider's eye, in this old house in the sunken block, she knew now
+that Pa was really unable to offer her anything more than a temporary
+relief from financial worry, and that her chances of finding employment
+in Monroe as compared to New York were about one to ten.
+
+Malcolm Monroe had been deeply involved for several years in "the firm"
+by which term he and Len referred to their real estate business
+together. A large tract of grassy brown meadow, south of the town, had
+been in his possession for thirty years; it was only with the opening
+of the new "Monroe's Grove" that he had realized its possibilities, or
+rather that Len had realized them.
+
+Len had held one or two office positions in Monroe unsatisfactorily
+before his twentieth year, and then had persuaded his father to send
+him to Berkeley, to the State University. Ma and Lydia had been proud
+of their under-graduate for one brief year, then Len was back again,
+disgusted with study. After a few months of drifting and experimenting,
+the brilliant idea of developing the old south tract into building
+sites had occurred to Len, and presently his father was also persuaded
+that here was a splendid opportunity. A little office on Main Street
+was rented, and its window embellished with the words "Own a Home in
+the Monroe Estates." Len really worked violently for a time; he rode
+his bicycle back and forth tirelessly. He married, and moved out into
+the Estates, and he personally superintended the work that went on
+there. Streets and plots were laid out, trees planted, the fresh muddy
+roads were edged with pyramids of brown sewer pipes.
+
+The financial outlay was enormous, unforeseen. Taxes went up, sidewalks
+crumbled back into the grass again, the four or five unfenced little
+wooden houses that were erected and occupied added to the general
+effect of forlornness. The Estates were mortgaged, and to the old
+mortgage on the homestead another was added.
+
+Len took Martie out to see the place. Slim little trees were bending in
+a sharp April wind; a small woman at the back of one of the small
+houses was taking whipping clothes from a line. The streets were deep
+in mud; Martie smiled as she read the crossposts: "High Street," "Maple
+Avenue," and "Sunset Avenue." Here and there a sign "Sold" embellished
+a barren half-acre.
+
+"You've really done wonders, Len," she said encouragingly. "And of
+course there's nothing like LAND for making money!"
+
+"Oh, there's a barrel of money in it," he answered dubiously, kicking a
+lump of dirt at his feet. They had left the little car at a
+comparatively dry crossing, and were walking about. "We've put in a
+hundred more trees this year, and I think we'll start another house
+pretty soon." And when they got back in the car, his face flushed from
+vigorous cranking, he added, "I talked Pa into getting the car; it
+makes it look as if we were making money!"
+
+"Of course it does," Martie said amiably. She thought her own thoughts.
+
+Lydia had nothing but praise for Len; he had worked like a Trojan, she
+said. And Pa had been wonderfully patient and good about the whole
+thing.
+
+"Pa was telling me the other day that he could have gotten ever so much
+money for this place, if he had had it levelled the time the whole town
+was," Lydia said, in her curious tone that was triumphantly
+complaining, one day.
+
+"I wonder what it's worth, as it stands," mused Martie.
+
+"Oh, Martie, I don't know! I don't know anything about it; he just
+happened to say that!"
+
+It was later on this same day that Martie went in to see Miss Fanny,
+and put her elbows on the desk, resting her troubled face in her hands.
+
+"Miss Fanny, sometimes I despair! Heaven knows I have had hard knocks
+enough, and yet I never learn," she burst out. "Seven years ago I used
+to come in here to you, and rage because I was so helpless! Well, I've
+had experience since, bitter experience, and yet here I am, helpless
+and a burden still!"
+
+Miss Fanny smiled her wide, admiring smile. Without a word she reached
+to a shelf behind her, and handed Martie a familiar old volume:
+"Choosing a Life Work." The colour rushed into Martie's face as she
+took it.
+
+"I'll read it NOW!" she said simply.
+
+"If you really want to work, Martie," suggested the older woman, "why
+don't you come in here with me? Now that we've got the Carnegie
+endowment, we have actually appropriated a salary for an assistant."
+
+Martie looked at her thoughtfully, looked backward perhaps over the
+long years.
+
+"I will," she said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+There was a storm at home over this decision, but Martie weathered it.
+Even Sally demurred, observing that people would talk. But one or two
+persons approved, and if Martie had needed encouragement, it would not
+have been wanting.
+
+One of her sympathizers was Dr. Ben. The two had grown to be good
+friends, and Martie's boy was as much at home in the little crowded
+garden and the three-peaked house as Sally's children were.
+
+"You're showing your common sense, Martie," said the old man; "stick to
+it. I don't know how one of your mother's children ever came to have
+your grit!"
+
+"I seem to have brought little enough back from New York," Martie said
+a little sadly. "But at least what Monroe thinks doesn't matter to me
+any more! People do what they like in the East."
+
+"You're coming on!" Dr. Ben smiled at his velvet wallflowers.
+
+Surprisingly, Joe Hawkes was another ally. He came back in May,
+penniless, but full of honours, and with his position in the new
+hospital secure. A small, second-hand car, packed with Hawkeses of all
+ages, began to be seen in Monroe streets, and Sally grew rosier and
+fatter and more childish-looking every day. Sally would never keep her
+hair neat, or care for hands or complexion, but evidently Joe adored
+her as he had on their wedding day.
+
+"Your father'll have nothing to leave, Martie," Joe said. "What little
+the Estates don't eat up must go to Lydia, and if you make a start
+here, why, you'll move on to something better!"
+
+"Miss Fanny hasn't moved on to something better," Martie submitted with
+a dubious smile.
+
+"Miss Fanny isn't you, Mart. She's gotten a long way for her. You know
+her father was the Patterson's hired man, and her mother actually had
+town help for a while, when he died. Now they have that cottage free of
+debt, and something in the Bank, and Miss Fanny belongs to the woman's
+club--that's enough for her. You can do better, and you will!"
+
+"I like you, Joe!" said Martie at this, quite frankly, and her
+brother-in-law's pleasant eyes met hers as he said:
+
+"I like you, too!"
+
+Sally, herself, did not belong to the Woman's Social and Civic Club; a
+fact that caused her some chagrin. Rose had actually been president
+once, as had May Parker, and among the thirty-six or seven members she
+and May were pleasantly prominent.
+
+"I never see Rose, but I should have thought she might elect me to the
+club," Sally said to Martie. "Unless, of course," she added,
+brightening, "Rose realizes how busy I am, and that it really would be
+an extravagance."
+
+"But why do you want to go, Sis? What do they do--sit around and read
+papers?"
+
+"Oh, well, they have tea, and they entertain visitors in town. And they
+have a historical committee to keep up the fountains and statues--well,
+I don't care!" Sally interrupted herself with a reluctant smile as
+Martie laughed. "It makes me sick for Rose to have everything and
+always be so smug!"
+
+"Oh, Sally Price Hawkes! Look at the children, and look at Joe,
+covering himself with glory!"
+
+"Well, I know." Sally looked ashamed. "But sometimes it does seem as if
+it wasn't fair!"
+
+"I met Rodney Parker the other day," Martie said thoughtfully. "It
+isn't that he wasn't extremely pleasant--not to say flattering! No one
+could have been more so. He told me that Rose was in the hospital, and
+that they had been so busy since I got to town--I told you all this?
+But as we parted my only thought was gratitude to Heaven that I had
+never married Rodney Parker!"
+
+Lydia, sitting sewing near by, coloured with shame at the indelicacy of
+this, and made her characteristic comment.
+
+"You don't mean that you--ALWAYS felt so, Martie?"
+
+"Always!" Martie echoed healthily. "Why, I was crazy about him."
+
+Lydia visibly shrank.
+
+"He's so LIMITED" Martie continued with spirit. "I'm glad that things
+have gone well with them, and that they have a baby at last! But to sit
+opposite that pleasant, fat face--he is getting quite fat!--and hear
+that complacent voice all the days of my life, those little puns, and
+that cheerful way of implying that he is the greatest man since
+Alexander--no, I couldn't!"
+
+"He has built Rose a lovely home, and made her a very happy woman,"
+Lydia said sententiously.
+
+"Well, I suppose that when I thought of marrying Rod, I thought of the
+old house," Martie pursued. "Of course, they HAVE built a nice home,
+but the glory for me was the old place! Rose has a big drawing room,
+and a big bedroom, and a guest's bath, and pantries and a side
+porch--but I like your house better, Sally, with its trees and flowers
+and babies!"
+
+"You're just SAYING that!" Sally observed.
+
+"I like civic pride," Martie, who was rambling on in her old
+inconsequential way, presently added, "but Rod is merely SMUG. I
+happened to mention some building in New York--I didn't know what to
+talk to the man about! He immediately told me that the Mason building
+down town was reinforced concrete throughout. I said that I had always
+missed the orchards in the East, and he said, with such an unpleasant
+laugh, 'We lead the world, Martie, you can't get away from it. Do you
+suppose I'd stay here one moment if I didn't think that there is a
+better chance of making money right here to-day than anywhere else in
+the world?'"
+
+She had caught his tone, and Sally disrespectfully laughed.
+
+"Well, I know he is one of our most prominent young men, and Rose was
+president of the club, and I suppose we less fortunate people can talk
+all we please, they'll be just that much better off than we are!" Lydia
+said with a little edge to her voice.
+
+"Because his father is rich, Lyd. If it wasn't for the dear old Judge,
+who pioneered and mined and planned and foresaw, where would Rod be
+to-day, telling me that HE thought it best that Rose should nurse the
+baby, and that he does this and thinks that?"
+
+"Oh, no, Mart, you can't say that. Rodney is really an awfully clever,
+steady fellow!" Sally said quickly.
+
+"Sometimes I think we talk lightly about making money," said Lydia,
+"but it's not such an easy thing to do!"
+
+Martie coloured.
+
+"Well, I'm making a start!" she said cheerfully. It was Lydia's turn to
+colour with resentment; she thought that Martie's acceptance of Miss
+Fanny's offer was something only a trifle short of disgrace.
+
+In the pleasant summer mornings Martie walked down town with her
+father, as she had done since she came home. But she left him at the
+big brick doorway of the Library now, and by the time the fogs had
+risen from Main Street, she was tied into her silicia apron and happily
+absorbed in her work. She and Miss Fanny tiptoed about the wide, cool
+spaces of the airy rooms, whispering, conferring. Sometimes, in
+mid-morning, Teddy came gingerly in with Aunt Lydia.
+
+"You're talking out loud, Moth'!"
+
+"Because there's nobody else here, darling!"
+
+Martie would catch the child to her heart with a joyous laugh. She was
+expanding like a flower in sunlight. Her work interested her, she liked
+to pick books for boys and girls, old women and children. She liked
+moving about in a businesslike way--not a casual caller, but a part of
+the institution. She had long, whispered conversations, at the desk,
+with Dr. Ben, with the various old friends. Sometimes Sally brought the
+baby in, and Martie sat Mary on the desk, and talked with one arm about
+the soft little body.
+
+Her duties were simple. She mastered them, to Miss Fanny's amazement,
+on the very first day, and in a week she felt herself happily at home.
+
+All Monroe passed before her desk, and every one stopped for a
+whispered chat. Martie came to like the wet days, when the rain slashed
+down, and the boys, reading at the long table, rubbed wet shoes
+together. There was a warmth and brightness and openness about the
+Library entirely different from the warmest home. And she took a deep
+interest in the members, advised them as to books, and held good books
+for them. She studied human nature under her green hanging-lamp; her
+eager eyes and brain were never satisfied. Not the least advantage to
+her new work was that she could carry home the new books.
+
+Where the happiness that began to flood her heart and soul came from
+had its source she could not tell. Like all happiness, it was made of
+little things; elements that had always been in Monroe, but that she
+had not seen before. She was splendidly well, as Teddy was, and their
+laughter made the days bright in the old house. Also she was lovely to
+look upon, and she must have been blind not to know it. Her tall, erect
+figure looked its best in plain black; Martie would never be fat again;
+her skin was like an apple blossom, white touched deeply with rose, her
+eyes, with their tender sadness and veiled mirth, were more blue than
+ever. Monroe came to know her buoyant step, her glittering, unconquered
+hair, her voice that had in it tones unfamiliar and charming. She
+scattered her gay and friendly interest everywhere; the women said that
+she had something, not quite style, better than style, an "air."
+
+One summer day Lydia saw her absorbed in the closely written sheets of
+a long letter from New York.
+
+"It's from Mr. Dryden, my friend there." Martie said, in answer to her
+mild look of questioning. "Don't you remember that I told you he had
+written a play that no manager would produce?"
+
+"You didn't tell ME, dear," Lydia amended, darning industriously.
+
+"Oh, yes, I did, Lyddy! I remember telling you!"
+
+"No, dear, perhaps you thought you did," Lydia persisted.
+
+"Oh, well! Anyway, I wrote and suggested that he try to get it
+published instead, and my dear--it's to be published next month. Isn't
+that glorious?"
+
+"That is all worn under the arms," Lydia murmured over an old waist
+that had been for months in her sewing basket, "I believe I will cut
+off the buttons and give it to the poor!"
+
+"The old idiot!" Martie mused over her letter.
+
+"Does his wife encourage this writing, Martie?"
+
+"Adele? She isn't with him now at all. She's left him, in fact. I
+believe she wants a divorce."
+
+"Oh?" Lydia commented, in a peculiar tone.
+
+"He wrote me that some weeks ago," Martie explained, suddenly flushing.
+"She was a queer, unhappy sort of woman. She and this doctor of hers
+had some sort of affair, and the outcome was that she simply went to
+friends, and wrote John a hysterical girly-girly sort of letter--"
+
+"John?"
+
+"Mr. Dryden, that is."
+
+"He must be crushed and heartbroken," Lydia said emphatically.
+
+"Well, no, he isn't," Martie said innocently. "He isn't like other
+people. If she wants a divorce--John won't mind awfully. He's
+really--really unusual."
+
+"He must be," Lydia said witheringly, and trembling a little with
+excitement, "to let his own wife leave him while he writes letters
+asking the advice of a--a--another woman who is recently--recently
+widowed!"
+
+Martie glanced at her, smiled a little, shrugged her shoulders, and
+calmly re-read her letter.
+
+Lydia resumed her work, a flush on her cheeks.
+
+"He can't have much respect for you, Martie," she said quietly, after a
+busy silence.
+
+Martie looked up, startled.
+
+"John can't? Oh, but Lyddy, you don't know him! He's such an innocent
+goose; he absolutely depends upon me! Why, fancy, he's the man who
+wanted me to open the boarding-house so that he and his wife could live
+there--he's as simple as that!"
+
+"As simple as what?" Lydia asked with her deadly directness.
+
+"Well--I mean--that if there were anything--wrong in his feeling for
+me--" Martie floundered.
+
+"Oh, Martie, Martie, Martie, I tremble for you!" Lydia said sadly. "A
+married man, and you a married woman! My dear, can't you see how far
+you've drifted from your own better self to be able to laugh about it?"
+
+"You goose!" Martie kissed the cool, lifeless cheek before she ran
+upstairs with her letter. John's straight-forward sentences kept
+recurring to her mind through many days. His letter seemed to bring a
+bracing breath of the big city. A day or two later she and Teddy
+chanced to be held in mid-street while the big Eastern passenger train
+thundered by, and she shut her fingers on John's letter in her pocket,
+and said eagerly, confidently, "Oh, New York! I wish I was going back!"
+
+But Lydia wore a grave face for several days, and annoyed and amused
+her younger sister with the attitude that something was wrong.
+
+Lydia had changed more than any one of them, Martie thought, although
+her life was what it had always been. She had been born in the old
+house, and had moved about it for these more than thirty years almost
+without an interruption. But in the last six years she had left
+girlhood forever behind; she was a prim, quiet, contentedly complaining
+woman now, a little too critical perhaps, a little self-righteous, but
+kind and good. Lydia's will was always for the happiness of others:
+Pa's comfort, Pauline's rights, and the wisest course for Martie and
+Sally to take occupied her mind and time far more than any personal
+interest of her own. But she had a limited vision of duty and
+convention, and even Sally fretted under her sway. Her father openly
+transferred his allegiance to Martie, and Lydia grieved over the
+palpable injustice without the slightest appreciation of its cause.
+
+She was infinitely helpful in times of emergency, and would take charge
+of Sally's babies, if Sally were ill, or slave in Sally's nursery if
+all or any of the children were indisposed. But she was not so obliging
+if mere pleasure took Sally away from her maternal duties. Sally told
+Martie that there was no asking Lyd to help, either she did it
+voluntarily, or wild horses couldn't make her do it at all.
+
+If her younger sisters entrusted their children to Aunt Lydia, she was
+an adoring and indulgent aunt. She loved to open her cookie jar for
+their raids, and to have them beg her favours or stories. But if Lydia
+had expressed the opinion that it was too cold for the children to go
+barefoot, and Martie or Sally revoked the decision, then Lydia wore a
+dark, resentful look for hours, and was apt to vent her disapproval on
+the children themselves.
+
+"No, get out of my lap, Jimmy. I don't want a boy that runs to his Mama
+and doesn't trust his Auntie," Lydia would say patiently, firmly, and
+kindly. Martie and Sally, wives for years, were able to refrain from
+any comment. To be silent when children are disciplined is one of the
+great lessons of marriage.
+
+"But I don't believe that a woman who ever had had a baby COULD rebuff
+a child like that," Martie told Sally. "I don't know, though, some
+aunts are wonderful! Only that pleasant justice does seem wasted on a
+child; it merely stings without being comprehensible in the least!"
+
+So the younger girls dismissed it philosophically. But it was one of
+the results of a life like Lydia's that human intercourse had no
+lighter phases for her. She must analyze and suspect and brood.
+Wherever a possible slight was hidden Lydia found it. She sometimes
+disappeared for a few hours upstairs, and came back with reddened eyes.
+
+Her father's devotion to Martie she bore with martyred sweetness. When
+they laughed together at dinner she listened with downcast eyes, a
+faint, pained smile on her lips.
+
+"Would you like Martie to sit in Ma's place, Pa?" she asked one
+morning, when she was folding her napkin neatly into the orange-wood
+napkin-ring marked "Souvenir of Santa Cruz." Her father's surprised
+negative hardly interrupted the account he was giving his youngest
+daughter of the law-suit he had won years ago against old man Thomas.
+But after breakfast Martie found Lydia crying into one of the aprons
+that Were hanging in the side-entry. "It's nothing!" she gulped as
+Martie's warm arms went about her. "Only--only I can't bear to have Ma
+forgotten already! You heard how Pa spoke-so short and so cold!"
+
+"Oh, Lyddy, DARLING!" Martie protested, half-amused, half-sympathetic.
+Lydia straightened herself resentfully.
+
+"I suppose I'm foolish," she said. "I suppose the best thing for us all
+to do is to forget and laugh, and go on as if life and death were only
+a JOKE!"
+
+But these storms were rare. Lydia's was a placid life. She was deeply
+delighted when her cooking was praised, although she pretended to be
+annoyed by it. She was wearing dresses now that had been hers six years
+ago; sometimes a blue gingham or a gray madras was worn a whole season
+by Lydia without one trip to the tub. She carried a red and gray
+parasol that Cliff Frost had given her ten years ago; her boots were
+thin, unadorned kid, creased by her narrow foot; they seemed never to
+wear out.
+
+As the years went by she quoted her mother more and more. The rather
+silent Mrs. Monroe had evidently left a fund of advice behind her.
+Nothing was too trivial to be affected by the memory of Ma's opinion.
+
+"Nice thick cream Williams is giving us," Lydia might say at the
+breakfast table. "Dear Ma used to say that good cream was half the
+secret of good coffee!" "I remember Ma used to say that marigolds were
+rather bold, coarse flowers," she confided to Martie, "and isn't it
+true?"
+
+Her appetite for the news of the village was still insatiable; it was
+rarely uncharitable, but it never ended. Martie came to recognize
+certain tones in Lydia's voice, when she and Alice Clark or Angela
+Baxter or young Mrs. King were on the shady side porch. There was the
+delicately tentative tone in which she trod upon uncertain ground: "How
+do you mean she's never been the same since last fall, Lou? I don't
+remember anything special happening to Minnie Scott last fall." There
+was a frankly and flatly amazed tone, in which Lydia might say: "Well,
+Clara told me yesterday about Potter Street, and if you'll tell me what
+POSSESSED that boy, I'll be obliged to you!" And then there was the
+tone of incredible announcement: "Alice, I don't know that I should
+tell this, because I only heard it last night, but I haven't been able
+to think of one other thing ever since, and I believe I'll tell you; it
+won't go any further. Mrs. Hughie Wilson came in here last night, and
+we got to talking about old Mrs. Mulkey's death--"
+
+And so on, for perhaps a full hour. Martie, smiling over her darning,
+would hear Alice's gratifying, "Well, for pity!" and "Did you EVER!" at
+intervals. Sometimes she herself contributed something, a similar case
+in New York, perhaps, but the others were not interested. They knew,
+without ever having expressed it, that there is no intimacy like that
+of a small village, no novelty or horror that comes so closely home to
+the people of the Eastern metropolis as did these Monroe events to
+their own lives.
+
+Martie loved her sister, and they came to understand each other's ways
+perfectly. Teddy was happy with Aunt Lyd when his mother was at the
+Library, and Lydia liked her authority over the child and his
+companionship. There was no peace in the old house, for all her silent
+meekness, unless Lydia's curious sense of justice was satisfied, and
+Martie took pains to satisfy it.
+
+One memorable day, just before Christmas, Martie opened a small
+package, to find John Dryden's book. She was in the Library when Miss
+Fanny came in with the mail, and her hand trembled as she cut the
+strings. The flimsy tissue paper jacket blew softly over her hand; a
+dark blue book, slim, dignified: "Mary Beatrice."
+
+He had not autographed it, but then John would never think of doing so.
+Martie smiled her motherly smile at the memory of his childish
+dependence upon her suggestions as to the smaller points of living. Her
+letter of congratulation began to run through her mind as she turned
+the title page.
+
+Suddenly her heart stopped beating. She wet her lips and glanced about.
+Miss Fanny had gone into the coat-room; nobody was near.
+
+Oh, madman, madman! He had dedicated it to her! A detected felony could
+not have given Martie a more sinking sensation than she experienced at
+the sight.
+
+Her initials: M. S. B.--she need puzzle only a second over the
+selection, for her letters to him were always signed, "Martha
+Salisbury, Bannister." And under the initials, this:
+
+Even as to Caesar, Cassar's toll, To God what in us is divine; So to
+your soul above my soul Whatever life finds good in mine. Martie read
+the four lines as many times, then she lifted the page to her cheek,
+and held it there, shutting her eyes, and drawing a deep, ecstatic
+breath.
+
+"Oh, John, JOHN, how wonderful of you!" she whispered, her heart rising
+on a swift, triumphant flight. Ah, this was something to have brought
+from the long years; this counted in that inner tribunal of hers.
+
+After awhile she began to turn the pages, wishing that she were a
+better judge of all these phrases. The play was short: three brief acts.
+
+"I think it's wonderful!" Martie decided. "I KNOW it is!"
+
+For the little volume, even at this first quick glimpse, was stamped
+with something fiery and strange. Martie's eyes drifted here and there;
+presently fell upon the lines that brought the frightened little
+Italian princess, fresh from her convent, to the strange coast of
+England, and to the welcome of the strange King, her prospective
+husband's brother. The words were simplicity's self, like all inspired
+words, yet they brought the colour to Martie's face, and a yearning
+pain to her heart. Youth and love in all their first gold glory were
+captured here, and something of youth and glory seemed to flood the
+Library throughout the quiet winter afternoon.
+
+The hours droned on, Martie, moving noiselessly about, and touching the
+switch that suddenly lighted the dim big room, paused at the window to
+look down upon Monroe. An early twilight was creeping into the village
+street, and the drug-store windows glowed with globes of purple and
+green. The shops were already disguised under bushy evergreens; wreaths
+of red and green paper made circles of steam against the show windows.
+Silva, of the fruit market opposite, was selling a Christmas tree from
+the score that lay at the curb, to a stout country woman, whose shabby,
+well-wrapped children watched the transaction breathlessly from a
+mud-spattered surrey. The Baxter girls went by, Martie saw them turn
+into the church yard, and disappear into the swinging black doors, "for
+a little visit."
+
+Nothing dramatic or beautiful in the scene: a little Western village
+street, on the eve of Christmas Eve, but to-night it was lighted for
+Martie with poetry and romance. The thought of a slim, dark-blue book
+with its four magic lines thrilled in her heart like a song.
+
+"Christmas day after to-morrow!" she said to Fanny, "don't you love
+Christmas?"
+
+But she knew that her real Christmas joy had come to-day.
+
+The December kitchen was gas-lighted long before she got there, and
+Pauline was deep in calm preparation for dinner. Pauline was a Canadian
+girl, and if her work ever confused or fatigued her, at least she never
+betrayed the fact. There never were pots and pans awaiting cleaning in
+Pauline's sink, there never was a teaspoonful of flour spilled upon her
+biscuit board. Her gingham cuffs were always starched and stiff, her
+colourless hair smooth. She was a silent, dun-coloured creature, whose
+most violent expression was an occasional deep, unctuous laugh at Mrs.
+Bannister's nonsense.
+
+Pauline did not prepare a meal in a series of culminating convulsions,
+with hair rumpling, face reddening, and voice rising every passing
+minute. She moved a shining pot forward on a shining stove, she took
+plates of inviting cold things from the safe, and lifted a damp napkin
+from her pats of butter. Then she said, in an uninterested voice: "You
+might tell your p'pa, Miss Lydia--"
+
+Humble as her business was, she had been taught it well. Martie,
+insatiable on this particular topic, sometimes questioned Pauline. She
+was given a meagre picture of a farmhouse on Prince Edward's Island, of
+a stern, exacting, loving mother who "licked" daughters and sons alike
+with a "trace-end" for any infractions of domestic rule. Of snows so
+lasting and deep that housewives buried their brown linens in October,
+and found them again, snowy white, on the April grass. Pauline's
+mother, dying of "a shock," had been the devoted daughter's charge for
+eleven hard years, then Pauline had married at thirty, only to be made
+a widow, by a lumber jam, at thirty-two. So it was fortunate that she
+could cook, for she was a plain woman, and what the country folk call
+"dumb," meaning dull, and unresponsive, and unambitious.
+
+To-night there was a little unusual clutter in the big, hot, clean
+kitchen; Lydia was making sandwiches for the Girls' Sodality Christmas
+Tree at the large table. Two or three empty cardboard boxes stood
+waiting the neatly trimmed and pressed bread: Lydia did this sort of
+thing perfectly. At the end of the table, his cheeks glowing, and his
+dark mop in a tumble, Teddy was watching in deep fascination.
+
+The room had the charm that use and simplicity lend to any room. There
+was nothing superfluous here, and nothing assumed. Martie knew every
+crack in the yellow bowl that held a crinkled rice-pudding; the broom
+had held that corner for thirty years; for thirty years the roller
+towel had dangled from that door. She and Len and Sally had seen their
+mother go to the broom for a straw, to test baking cake, a hundred
+times; their sticky little faces had been dried a hundred times on the
+towel.
+
+But to-night a new, homely sweetness seemed to permeate the place.
+Martie had left the slim, dark-blue book upstairs in her bureau drawer,
+but her mood of exquisite lightheartedness she had not laid aside. She
+sat down in the kitchen rocker, and Teddy climbed into her lap, and,
+while she talked with Lydia, distracted her with little kisses, with
+small hands squeezing her cold cheeks, and with the casual bumping of
+his hard little head against her face.
+
+"I declare it begins to feel Christmassy, Lyd! Did you get down town to
+see the stores? I never saw anything like Bonestell's in my life. It's
+cold, too--but sort of bracing cold! We had both the stoves going all
+day; we had to light the lights at four! It was rather nice, everybody
+coming in to say 'Merry Christmas!'"
+
+"The children had their closing exercises at school this morning,"
+Lydia contributed, "and afterward Sally and I walked down town, with
+all the children. She expects Joe to-morrow. She wanted Billy and Jim
+to get in a nap, so I brought Ted home."
+
+"And I took a long nap!" Teddy whispered in his mother's ear.
+
+"I don't know what possesses the child to whisper that way!" Lydia
+said, annoyed.
+
+"He just said that he had a nap, Lyd, I think he didn't want to
+interrupt."
+
+"Oh, he got a good nap in," Lydia admitted, pacified, "if you're really
+going to take him to-night, I've laid out his clean things."
+
+"I saw them on the bed, Lyd--you're a darling!"
+
+"Am I going?" Teddy asked, with a bounce.
+
+"Is Aunt Sally going to take the children?" Martie temporized. But
+Teddy knew from her tone that he was safe. Indeed, his mother loved the
+realization that she was his court of last appeal, that it was to her
+memory of authority abused that his happiness was entrusted. It was her
+joy to explain, to adjust, to reconcile, the little elements of his
+life. She taught him the rules of simplicity and industry and service
+as another mother might have taught him his multiplication table. Teddy
+might have poverty and discouragement to face some day, but life could
+never be all dark to him while his mother interpreted it.
+
+She took him upstairs now, to dress for the great occasion of the
+Sodality Christmas tree, and dressed herself, prettily, as well. But
+before she turned out the gas, and followed the galloping small boy
+downstairs, she opened her bureau drawer.
+
+And again the slim book was in her hands, and again her dazzled eyes
+were reading the few words that gave her new proof that John had not
+forgotten.
+
+For a few minutes she stood dreaming; dreaming of the old
+boarding-house, and the little furniture clerk with his eager,
+faun-like smile. And for the first time she let her fancy play with the
+thought of what life might be for the woman John Dryden loved.
+
+But she put the book and the thought quickly away, her cheeks burning,
+and went down to the homely, inviting odours of supper, of Pauline's
+creamed salmon and fluffy rolls. Her father sat beside the fire, in a
+sort of doze, his long, lean hands idly locked, his glasses pushed up
+on his lead-coloured forehead.
+
+Martie kissed him, catching the old faint unpleasant smell of breath
+and moustache as she did so, helped him to the table, and tied Teddy's
+napkin under the child's round, firm chin. She talked of anything and
+everything, of Christmas surprises, and Christmas duties--
+
+And all the while her heart sang. When with Teddy on one side, and
+Lydia leaning on the free arm, she was walking through the winter
+darkness her feet wanted to dance on the cold, hard earth.
+
+"It's Christmas--Christmas--Christmas!" she laughed, when the little
+boy commented upon her gaiety. Lydia found the usual damper for her
+mood.
+
+"Very different for you from last Christmas, poor Mart!" she observed,
+with a long sigh.
+
+Martie was sobered. They went into the church for a moment's prayer,
+and Teddy wriggled against her in the dark, and managed to get a little
+arm about her neck, for he knew that she was crying. The revulsion had
+come, and Martie, tears running down her face in the darkness, was only
+a lonely woman again, unsuccessful, worried, trapped in a dull little
+village, missing her baby!
+
+Women were coming and going on the altar, trimming it with odorous
+green for Christmas. There was a pungent smell of evergreen in the air.
+About the confessionals there was a constant shuffle, whispering and
+stirring; radiators hissed and clanked, the big doors creaked and swung
+windily.
+
+Sally and her whispering tribe were just in front of them; presently
+they all went out into the cold, and across a bare yard to the lights
+and warmth and noise and music of the Sodality Hall. Sally saw that
+Martie had been crying, and when they were seated together in one of
+the rows of chairs against the wall, with their laps full of children's
+coats, she touched the hidden hurt.
+
+"Martie, dearest, I'm so sorry!"
+
+"I know!" Martie blinked and managed a smile.
+
+"I'll be glad for you when this first Christmas is over!" Sally said
+earnestly.
+
+Martie's answering look was full of gratitude: she thought it strangely
+touching to see the blooming little mother deliberately try to bring
+her gay Christmas mood into tune with sorrow and loss. Sally's
+beautiful Elizabeth was one of the Christmas angels in the play
+to-night, and Sally's pride was almost too great to bear. Billy was
+sturdily dashing about selling popcorn balls, and Jim was staggering to
+and fro flirting with admiring Sodality girls. The young Hawkeses were
+at their handsome best, and women on all sides were congratulating
+Sally.
+
+What could Sally dream, Martie mused, of a freezing Eastern city packed
+under dirty snow, of bitter poverty, of a tiny, gold-crowned girl in a
+shabby dressing-gown, of a coaster wrapped in wet paper, and delivered
+in a dark, bare hall? Sally's serene destiny lay here, away from the
+damp, close heat under which milk poisoned and babies wilted, away from
+the icy cold that caught shuddering flesh and blood under its solid
+pall. These friendly, chattering women were Sally's world, these
+problems of school and rent and food were Sally's problems.
+
+But Martie knew now that she was not of Monroe, that she must go back.
+She was not Sally, she was not Rose; she had earned her entry into a
+higher school. Those Eastern years were not wasted, she must go on now,
+she must go on--to what?--to what?
+
+And with New York her thoughts were suddenly with John, and Sally,
+glancing anxiously at her, saw that she was smiling. Martie did not
+notice the look: she was far away. She saw the Christmas tree, and the
+surging children, through a haze of dreams.
+
+Mysterious, enviable, unattainable--thought the Sodality girls, eying
+the black-clad figure, with its immaculate touches of white at wrists
+and throat. Mrs. Bannister had run away with an actor and had lived in
+New York, and was a widow, they reminded each other, and thrilled. She
+never dreamed that they made her a heroine and a model, quoted her,
+loitered into the Library to be enslaved afresh by her kind, unsmiling
+advice. She felt herself far from the earliest beginnings of real
+achievement: to them, as to herself ten years ago, she was a person
+romantic and exceptional--a somebody in Monroe!
+
+Somebody brought her Jim, sweet and sleepy, and he subsided in her lap.
+Len's wife sank into a neighbouring chair, to express worried hopes
+that the March baby would be a boy, a male in the Monroe line at last.
+Rose fluttered near, with pleasant plans for a dinner party. Martie's
+thought were with a slim, dark-blue book, safe in her bureau drawer.
+
+She wrote John immediately. There was no answer, but she realized that
+the weeks that went on so quietly in Monroe were bringing him rapidly
+to fame and fortune.
+
+"Mary Beatrice" was an instantaneous success. It was not quite poetry,
+not quite drama, not quite history. But its combination of the three
+took the fancy, first of the critics, then of the public. It was read,
+quoted, and discussed more than any other book of the year. Martie
+found John's photograph in all the literary magazines, and saw his name
+everywhere. Interviews with him frequently stared at her from
+unexpected places, and flattering prophecies of his future work were
+sounded from all sides. Three special performances of "Mary Beatrice,"
+and then three more, and three after that, were given in New York, and
+literary clubs everywhere took up the book seriously for study.
+
+Well, Martie thought, reviewing the matter, it was not like one's
+dreams, but it was life, this curious success that had come to the
+husband of a woman like Adele, the odd, inarticulate little clerk in a
+furniture store. She wondered if it had come in time to save the
+divorce, wondered where John was living, what change this extraordinary
+event had made in his life.
+
+Her own share in it came to seem unreal, as all the old life was
+unreal. Gradually, what Monroe did and thought and felt began to seem
+the real standard and the old life the false. Martie agreed with Lydia
+that the little Eastman girl had a prettier voice than any she had ever
+heard in New York; she agreed with Rose that the Woman's Club was
+really more up-to-date than it was possible for a club to be in the big
+Eastern city.
+
+"I know New York," smiled Rose, "and of course, I love it. Rod and I
+have been there twice, and we do have the best times! And I admit that
+Tiffany's and the big shops and so on, well, of course, they're
+wonderful! We stayed there almost three weeks the last time, and we
+just WENT every moment of the time--"
+
+Martie, leaning on the desk before her and smiling vaguely, was not
+listening. The other woman's words had evoked a sudden memory of the
+early snows and the lights in the Mall, of the crashing elevated trains
+with chestnut-sellers' lights blowing beneath them, of summer dawns,
+when the city woke to the creeping tide of heat, and of autumn
+afternoons, when motor cars began to crowd the Avenue, and leaves
+drifted--drifted--in the Park. To Rose she answered duly: "You must
+have had great fun!" But to herself she said: "Ah, you don't know MY
+New York!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+One wet January night Malcolm came home tired and cross to find his
+younger daughter his only company for dinner. Lydia had been sent for
+in haste, by Mrs. Harry Kilroy, whose mother was not expected to live,
+said the panting messenger, thereby delicately intimating that she WAS
+expected to die. Teddy was as usual at Aunt Sally's.
+
+Martie coaxed the fire to a steady glow, and seated herself opposite
+her father with a curiosity entirely unmixed with the old apprehension.
+Pa was unmistakably upset about something.
+
+Under her pleasant questioning it came out. Old Tate and Cliff Frost
+had come into the office of the Monroe Estates that afternoon to make
+him an offer for the home site. Martie could see that her father
+regretted that Lydia and Lydia's horrified protests were missing.
+
+"I looked them in the eye," said Malcolm, wiping his moustache before
+he gave her an imitation of his own scorn, "and I said, 'Gentlemen,
+before the home that was my father's, and will be my son's, passes from
+my hands, those hands will be dust!'"
+
+"But why do they want it?" asked Martie after duly applauding this
+sentiment.
+
+She was rapidly thinking. The old house was mortgaged, and doubly
+mortgaged. It was useless to the average buyer, for besides the fact
+that the neighbourhood was no longer Monroe's best, it was four feet
+below street level. It was surrounded by useless shabby barns and
+outhouses, it was five times too large for the diminished family, and,
+in case of Pa's death--and Pa was nearly seventy--it must fetch what it
+might, for between Len's constant need of money for the Estates, and
+Lydia's mild helplessness, there could be no holding it for a fair
+price.
+
+"For the new High School--for the new High School!" her father said
+impatiently. For perhaps twenty years he had had occasional offers for
+the property, and had always scornfully refused them.
+
+"Yet I think that's rather touching, Pa," Martie said.
+
+"What's touching?" he asked suspiciously, after a moment in which he
+obviously tried to see any touching aspect in the affair.
+
+"Why, to have the Monroe High School on the old Monroe site!" Martie
+said innocently. "Of course Mr. Tate and Cliff Frost know what it means
+to you, and yet I suppose they realize that the neighbourhood is
+changing, and that those shops have come in, this side of the bridge,
+and that, even if we lived here ten years more, we couldn't twenty. I
+agree with your decision, Pa, of course; but at the same time, I see
+that no other plot in Monroe would be so fitting!"
+
+Malcolm stirred his tea, raised the cup, and drank off the hot fluid
+with great gusto. A faint frown darkened his brow.
+
+"And, pray, where would the family live?" he asked presently.
+
+"Where we ought to be now," Martie answered promptly. "In the Estates.
+I have been thinking lately, Pa, that nothing would give that
+development such prestige as to have you there! Put up as pretty a
+house as you choose, build a drive, and put in a handsome fence, but be
+Malcolm Monroe of the Monroe Estates!"
+
+Always captured by phrases, she saw him tug at his moustache to hide a
+smile.
+
+"Well!" he said presently. "Well! You astonish me. But yes, I see your
+point. I must candidly admit you have a point there. With another
+attractive home there--yes, there is something in that. But I had
+supposed that you girls had a sentiment for this old place," he added
+almost reproachfully.
+
+"And so we have!" Martie answered quickly. "But it is one thing to sell
+this place in small lots, Pa, and have it chopped into shops and
+shanties, and another to have a three-hundred-thousand-dollar building
+go in here. The new High School on the old Monroe place; you'll admit
+there's a great difference?"
+
+Had her bombastic father always been so easily influenced? Martie
+wondered, remembering the old storms and the old stubbornness. It was
+true, some persons couldn't do things; other persons could. Lydia and
+Ma would have goaded him into an obstinacy that no later judgment could
+dispel, and after his death Monroe would have lamented that he had left
+next to nothing, for the place had to go for taxes and interest
+overdue, and Lydia and Ma would have settled themselves comfortably on
+Len for life.
+
+"All the difference in the world," Malcolm said, now deep in thought.
+
+"You could send a letter to the Zeus," Martie added presently, "saying
+that you had never even considered such a step before, but that to sell
+for educational purposes was--you know!--was in accord with the spirit
+of your father--that sort of thing!"
+
+"And so it was!" he answered warmly.
+
+"A few ready thousands would be the making of the Estates, now," said
+Martie, "but naturally the town need know nothing of that!"
+
+Malcolm shrugged a careless assent, and silently finished his pie.
+
+"Your sister Lydia--" he began suddenly, shaking his head.
+
+"Yes, Lyd will object," Martie assented, as his voice stopped. "Lyd is
+a conservative, Pa. She has very little of the spirit that brought
+Grandfather Monroe here; she doesn't, in the Estates, see property that
+will be just as beautiful and just as valuable as anything in Monroe in
+a few years. Why, Pa, you must remember the days when our trees in the
+yard here were only saplings?"
+
+"Remember?" he echoed impressively. "Why, I remember Monroe as the
+field between two sheep-ranches. There was not a blade of wheat, not a
+fruit tree--"
+
+He was well started. Martie listened to an hour's complacent
+reminiscence. At eight o'clock he went to his study, but came back a
+moment later, with his glasses pushed up on his lead-coloured forehead,
+to say that the sum old Tait mentioned would clear the mortgage, build
+a handsome house, and perhaps leave a bit over for Martie and her boy.
+At nine he appeared again, to say that he would deed the new house to
+Lydia, who would undoubtedly take the change a little hard--a little
+hard!
+
+"Yes," said old Malcolm thoughtfully, from the doorway, glancing, with
+his spectacles still on his forehead, at the pencilled list he had in
+his hand. "Yes, I believe I have hit upon the solution!
+I--believe--I--have--hit--it!"
+
+Old Mrs. Sark having fulfilled her family's mournful expectations,
+Lydia stayed for the funeral, and was so deeply absorbed and satisfied
+by her position in the Kilroy house that she returned home still
+impressive, consolatory, and crushed in manner.
+
+She sat beside Martie on the front steps, in the warm March twilight,
+retailing the events of the last three days, and living again their
+moments of grief and stress.
+
+"I know I was a consolation to them, Mart--of course, there's little
+enough one can do! But yesterday morning--I sat up both nights; I
+declare I don't know where the strength comes from--yesterday morning,
+before the funeral, I went up to Louis Kilroy--I never saw a grown man
+take a thing so hard--and I said, 'Louis, you must come and have a cup
+of hot, strong coffee!' Bessie was there, and I must say she seemed as
+devoted to Grandma as if she'd been her own daughter, and she came and
+took my hands, and she said, 'Lydia, I never will forget all you've
+done for us!' Well," Lydia went on, with a sad little deprecatory
+shrug, "I didn't do much. But it was somebody THERE, you know! Somebody
+to do the plain little everyday things that MUST be done, whether death
+is in the house, or not!" And Lydia sighed in weary content. "Carrie
+David says she believes Tom'll go next--" she was pursuing mournfully,
+when Martie interrupted.
+
+"Say, Lyd dear, we've been having great times since you were away--I
+didn't have a chance to say a word to you at the funeral--but the
+school board, or the city fathers, or some one, has made Pa an offer
+for the house!"
+
+"What house?" Lydia asked interestedly.
+
+"THIS one." Martie began to chew the fresh sprout of a yellow banksia
+rose.
+
+"This one!" Lydia's mouth remained a little open, her eyes were wild.
+
+"Yes; this whole tract. They'll fill it in; they want if for the new
+High School."
+
+"Well--" Lydia tossed her head loftily. "Of course, Pa told them--?"
+
+"Yes, he did tell them, as he always has--that nothing would persuade
+him to part with it!"
+
+"WELL!" said Lydia, breathing again.
+
+"But he's been thinking it over, Lyd, and he's really seriously
+reconsidering it. You see the instant Pa dies, the Bank will foreclose,
+for neither you nor I have a cent, and Len is tied up for years with
+the Estates--"
+
+Martie began to speak eagerly and quickly. But her voice died before
+Lydia's look.
+
+"Martie! How can you! Speaking of Pa's death in that callous,
+cold-blooded way; when poor Ma hasn't been buried three years--and now
+dear old Grandma Sark--"
+
+Lydia fumbled for a handkerchief, and began to sob. After a few
+moments, in which Martie only offered a few timid pats on her shoulder
+for consolation, she suddenly dried her eyes, and began with bitter
+clearness:
+
+"I know who has done this, Mart! I don't say much, but I see. I see now
+where all your petting of Pa, and humouring Pa, was leading! Oh, how
+can you--how can you--how CAN you! My home, the dear old Monroe place,
+that three generations of us--but I won't stand it! I feel as if Ma
+would rise up and rebuke me! No, you and Pa can decide what you please,
+but no power on earth will make me--and where would we live, might I
+ask? We couldn't go to the Poor House, I suppose?"
+
+"Pa'd build a lovely house, smaller and more modern, on the Estates,"
+Martie explained. Lydia assumed a look of high scorn.
+
+"Oh, indeed!" she said, gulping and wiping her eyes again. "Indeed! Is
+that so? Move out there so that Len would prosper, so that there would
+be one more house out on that DESOLATE flat field--very well, you and
+Pa can go! But I stay here!"
+
+And trembling all over, as she always did tremble when forced into
+anything but a mildly neutral position, Lydia went upstairs. The dinner
+hour was embittered by a painful discussion and by more tears.
+
+Malcolm was somewhat inclined to waver toward Lydia's view, but Martie
+was firm. When Lydia tearfully protested that, just as it stood, the
+house would made an ideal "gentleman's estate," Martie mercilessly
+answered that at its present level, without electric light or garage or
+baths, it was just so much "old wood and plaster." Lydia winced at this
+term as if she had been struck.
+
+"How would you pay taxes and interest, if anything happened to Pa?"
+Martie demanded briskly.
+
+"We would have no rent to pay," Lydia countered quickly, red spots
+burning in her cheeks, and giving her mild face an unusually wild look.
+"Why do people own their homes, if there's no economy in it?"
+
+"Rent doesn't come to three thousand a year!" Martie reminded her.
+Lydia looked startled. "We could rent that whole upper floor," she said
+hesitatingly.
+
+"But you would rather have this place a school house than a
+boarding-house?" argued Martie.
+
+Lydia's wet eyes reddened again.
+
+"DON'T say such horrible things, Martie! The way you put things it's
+enough to scare Pa to death! Why shouldn't we live here, as we always
+have lived?" She turned to her father. "Pa, it's not RIGHT for you to
+consider such a change just because Martie----"
+
+"I'm doing it for you, Lyd," Martie said quickly. "I shall be in New
+York--"
+
+They hardly heard her; Martie had talked of New York since she was a
+child. But Martie suddenly realized that it was true; she had really
+been planning and contriving to go back through all these placid months.
+
+"I'll discuss it with your brother," Malcolm finally said. "I'll see
+what Leonard thinks."
+
+"But, Pa," Martie protested, "what does LEN know about it?"
+
+"I suppose a man may be supposed to know more about business than a
+woman!" Lydia exclaimed.
+
+"Yes--yes, this is a man's affair," Malcolm conceded, scraping his
+chin. "Your brother has been associated with men in business affairs
+for years; he had some college work. I'll see Len."
+
+There was nothing more to say. Martie felt instinctively that Len would
+approve of the sale of the old place, and she was right, but it was
+galling to have his opinion so eagerly sought by her father, and to
+have him so gravely quoted. Len, slow witted and suspicious, thought
+that there was "something in the idea," but added pompously that he
+could not see that the Monroes, as a family, were under any need of
+obliging the Frosts and the Tates, and that the property was there in
+any case, and there was no occasion for hurry.
+
+Malcolm repeated these views at the dinner table with great
+seriousness, and Lydia triumphantly echoed them over and over. As she
+and Martie dusted and made beds the older sister poured forth a quiet
+stream of satisfied comment. Such things were for men's deciding, after
+all, and she, Lydia, never would and never could understand how they
+were able to settle things so quickly and so wisely.
+
+But Martie was not beaten. She knew that Len was wrong; there was no
+time to waste. The old Mussoo tract, down at the other end of the town,
+was also under consideration, and the deal might be closed any day. One
+quiet, wet day she asked Miss Fanny for leave of absence, and went to
+the office of old Charley Tate. Mr. Tate was not there, Potter Street
+told her, taking his feet from a desk, and slapping his book shut.
+However, if there was anything he could do, Mart--?
+
+No; she thanked him. She would go up to the Bank, and see Mr. Frost.
+She met Rose coming out as she went in.
+
+"Hello, Martie!" Rose was all cordiality. "Nice weather for ducks,
+isn't it? But fortunately you and I aren't sugar or salt, are we? Were
+you going to see Rodney?"
+
+"Clifford Frost," Martie told her. Did Rose's face really brighten a
+little--she wondered?
+
+"Oh! Well, he's there! Come soon and see Doris!" Rose got into the
+motor car, and Martie went into the Bank.
+
+Clifford was a tall man, close to fifty, thinner than Dr. Ben, more
+ample of figure than Malcolm. He wore a thin old alpaca coat in the
+Bank in this warm spring weather. A green shade was pushed up against
+his high forehead, which shone a little, and as Martie settled herself
+opposite him, he took off his big glasses, and dried them in a
+leisurely fashion with a rotary motion of his white handkerchief.
+
+He was reputedly the richest man in town, but rich in country fashion.
+Such property as he had, cattle, a farm or two, several buildings in
+Main Street, and stock in the Bank, he studied and nursed carefully,
+not from any feeling of avarice, but because he was temperate and
+conservative in all his dealings.
+
+Martie liked his office, much plainer than Rodney's, but with something
+dignified about its well-worn furnishings that Rodney's shining brass
+and glass and mahogany lacked. She thought that perhaps Ruth had given
+her father the two pink roses that were toppling in a glass on the
+desk; she eyed the big photograph of Colonel Frost respectfully.
+
+"Well, well, Mrs. Bannister, how do you do! I declare I haven't seen
+much of you since you came back! How's that boy of yours? Nice
+boy--nice little feller."
+
+"He's well, thank you, Clifford; he's never been ill. And how's your
+own pretty girl?" Martie smiled, using the little familiarity
+deliberately.
+
+When he answered, with a father's proud affection, he called her
+"Martie," as she suspected he might. She went to her point frankly. Pa,
+she explained, was playing fast and loose with the town's offer for the
+property. The man opposite her frowned, nodded, and stared at the floor.
+
+"You girls naturally feel--" he nodded sympathetically.
+
+"Lydia does. But, Clifford, that's just where I need your help. I think
+it would be madness not to sell!"
+
+"Madness NOT to?" It was not clear yet. "Then you WANT to?"
+
+She went over her ground patiently. His face brightened with
+comprehension.
+
+"I see! Well, now, that puts a different face on it," he said. "Of
+course, I want the deal to go through," he admitted, "and if you can
+talk your father over--"
+
+"That's what I want you to do!" Martie assured him gaily.
+
+He laughed in answer.
+
+"He don't pay any attention to me!" he confessed. "I's telling him only
+yes'day that it wasn't good business to hang onto that piece. I told--"
+
+"But Clifford," she suggested, "I want you to take this tack. I want
+you to tell him that the town has a sentiment about it--the old Monroe
+place, you know. Tell him that people feel it OUGHT to be public
+property, and then, when he agrees, whip some sort of paper out of your
+pocket, and have him sign it then and there!"
+
+Clifford Frost was not quick of thought, but he was shrewd, and his
+smile now was compounded of admiration for the scheme and the schemer
+alike.
+
+"I declare you're quite a business woman, Martie!" he said. "It's a
+pity Len hasn't got it, too. I b'lieve I can work your Pa that way;
+anyway, I'll try it! I supposed you girls were hanging on like grim
+death to that piece--"
+
+After this the conversation rambled pleasantly; presently, in the midst
+of a discussion of mortgages, he took one of the roses, and called her
+attention to it. It had had some special care; Martie could honestly
+admire it. Clifford told her to keep it, and her blue eyes met his
+friendly ones, behind the big glasses, as she pinned it on her blouse.
+
+"I declare you've got quite a different look since you came back,
+Martie," he said. "You're quite a New Yorker! I said to Ruthie a while
+back, that there was a strange lady in town; I'd seen her with Mrs. Joe
+Hawkes. 'Why, Papa,' she says, 'that's Mrs. Bannister!' I assure you I
+could hardly believe it. You've took off considerable flesh, haven't
+you?"
+
+"I've had my share," Martie answered in the country phrase, with a
+smile and a sigh.
+
+"Well, I guess that's so, too!" he said quickly with an answering sigh.
+"What was the--the cause?" he asked delicately. "He was a big, strong
+fellow. I remember him quite well; friend of Rodney's."
+
+He told her circumstantially, in return for her brief confidences, of
+his wife's death. How she had not been well, and how she had refused
+the regular dinner on a certain night, first mentioned as "the
+Tuesday," and then corrected to "the Wednesday," and had asked Polly to
+boil her two eggs, and then had not wanted them, either. With loving
+sorrow he had remembered it all; frank tears came to his eyes, and
+Martie liked him for them.
+
+When they parted, he walked with her to the Bank door, and asked her,
+if she was interested in roses, to let him drive her up some day to see
+his.
+
+"An old-fashioned garden--an old-fashioned garden!" he said, smiling
+from the doorway. Martie, pleasantly stirred, went back to the Library,
+to put her rose in water and congratulate herself upon her mission.
+
+"Poor Clifford! He will never get over his wife's death!" Lydia said
+that evening. "Where'd you meet him, Mart?"
+
+"I deposited some money in the Bank," Martie said truthfully. "He's
+awfully pleasant, I think."
+
+Lydia paid no further attention. She presently went back to another
+topic. "Nelson Prout said he was going to take it up with the
+Principal. He says there's no earthly reason in the world why Dorothy
+shouldn't have passed this Christmas. Elsa told me Dorothy has been
+crying ever since and they're worried to death about her--"
+
+Lydia suspected no treachery. What Len and Pa had settled was settled.
+She felt that Martie was merely easing her indignation when the younger
+sister spent several evenings attempting to write an article on the
+subject of economic independence for women. Martie had tried to write
+years ago; it was a safe and ladylike amusement.
+
+"What's it all about?" Lydia asked.
+
+"Oh, it's practically an appeal to give girls the same chance that boys
+have!"
+
+Lydia smiled.
+
+"But don't they HAVE it? Girls don't want it, that's all."
+
+"Neither do boys, Lyd."
+
+"So your idea would be to force something they didn't want on girls,
+just because it's forced on boys?" Lydia said, quietly triumphant.
+
+Martie, looking up from her scratched sheets, smiled and blinked at her
+sister for a few seconds.
+
+"Exactly!" she said then, pleasantly.
+
+She finished the little article, and called it "Give Her A Job!" It was
+only what she had attempted to express during her first return visit to
+Monroe years ago; during those days and nights of fretting when the
+thought of Golda White had ridden her troubled thoughts like an evil
+dream. Later, she had re-written the article, just before Wallace's
+return from long absence to New York. Now she wrote it again: it was a
+relief to have it finally polished and finished, and sent away in the
+mail. She had never before despatched it so indifferently.
+
+Even when the editor's brief, pleasant note was in her hand, three
+weeks later, and when she had banked the check for thirty-five dollars,
+Martie was not particularly thrilled. It was so small a drop in the
+ocean of magazine reading--it was so short a step toward independence!
+She told Miss Fanny and Sally about it, and for a month or two watched
+the magazine for it. Then she forgot it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+She forgot it for a new dream. For long before the tangled negotiations
+that surrounded the sale of the old Monroe place were completed,
+Martie's thoughts were absorbed by a new and tremendous consideration:
+Clifford Frost was paying her noticeable attention.
+
+Monroe saw this, of course, before she did. Without realizing it,
+Martie still kept a social gulf between herself and the Frost and
+Parker families. They were the richest and most prominent people in the
+village, she was just one of the Monroe girls. She was too busy, and
+too little given to thought of herself, to waste time on speculations
+of this nature.
+
+More than that, Lydia's deep resentment of the sale of the old home
+gave Martie food for thoughts of another nature. Lydia never let the
+subject rest for an instant. She came to the table red-eyed and
+sniffing. It was no use to plant sweet-peas this year, it was no use to
+prune the roses. Whether Lydia was sitting rocking on the side porch
+silently, through the spring twilight, or impatiently flinging a
+setting hen off the nest, with muttered observations concerning the
+senseless scattering of the Monroe family before that setting of eggs
+could be hatched, Martie felt her deep and angry disapproval.
+
+It was several weeks, and April had clothed Monroe in buttercups and
+new grass, before Martie became aware that the name of Clifford Frost
+was frequently associated with Lydia's long protests.
+
+"I suppose it's the new way of doing things," she heard her sister
+saying one day. "Delicacy--! They don't know what it is nowadays. Do as
+you like--run into a man's office--meet him on the steps after
+church--!"
+
+Martie felt a sudden prick. She had indeed gone more than once to
+Clifford's office, and last Sunday she had indeed chanced to meet him
+after church--!
+
+"Tear away old associations!" Lydia was continuing darkly.
+"Slash--chop--nothing matters! I know I am old-fashioned," she added,
+with a sort of violent scorn. "But I declare it makes me laugh to
+remember how dignified _I_ was--Ma used to say that it was born in me
+to hold aloof! A man had to say something PRETTY DEFINITE before I was
+willing to fling myself into his arms! And what's the result, I'm an
+old maid--and I have myself to thank!"
+
+"Lyddy, darling, WHAT are you driving at?"
+
+The sisters were at supper together, on a warm spring Sunday. Martie,
+removing from his greasy little hand a chop-bone that Teddy had chewed
+white, looked up to see that her sister's face was pale, and her eyes
+reddened with tears. Cornered, Lydia took refuge in pathos.
+
+"Oh--I don't know! I suppose it's just that I cannot seem to feel that
+one of those bare little houses in the Estates EVER will seem like
+home," faltered Lydia. "You and Pa must do as you think best, of
+course--you're young and bright and full of life, and naturally you
+forget--but I suppose I feel that Ma--that Ma--!"
+
+She left the table in tears, Martie staring rather bewilderedly after
+her. Teddy gazed steadily at his mother, a question in his dark eyes.
+He was not a talkative child, except occasionally, when she and he were
+alone, but they always understood each other. To Martie he was the one
+exquisite and unalloyed joy in life. His splendid, warm little person
+was at once the tie that bound her to the old days, and to the future.
+Whatever that future might be, it would bring her nothing of which she
+could be so proud. Nobody else might claim him; he was hers.
+
+He suddenly smiled at her now, and slipping from the table with a great
+square of sponge cake in his hand, backed up to his mother to have his
+napkin untied. He guarded his cake as best he could when his mother
+suddenly beset him with a general rumpling and kissing, and then
+slipped out into the yard as silently as a little rabbit.
+
+But Martie sat on, musing, trying to catch the inference that she knew
+she had missed from Lydia's tirades. Lydia was furious about the sale
+of the house, of course--but this new note--?
+
+In a rush, comprehension came. Alone in the dark old dining room, in
+the disorder of the Sunday suppertable, Martie's cheeks were dyed a
+bright, conscious crimson. Could Lydia mean--could Lydia possibly be
+implying that Cliff--that Cliff--?
+
+For half an hour she sat motionless--thinking. The richest--the most
+respected man in Monroe, and herself engaged to him, married to him.
+But could it be true?
+
+She began to remember, to recall and dissect and analyze her recent
+encounters with Clifford, and as she did so, again the warm girlish
+colour flooded her cheeks with June. No questioning it, he had rather
+singled her out for his companionship of late. Last Sunday, and the
+Sunday before, he had come to call--once, most considerately, the girls
+thought, to show Pa the plans for the new High School, once to take
+Martie and Sally and the children driving. Martie had sat next him on
+the front seat, during the drive, her black veil blowing free about her
+wide-brimmed hat, her blue eyes dancing with pleasure, and her cheeks
+rosy in the cool foggy air.
+
+Well, she was widowed. She was free to marry again. It seemed strange
+to her that in eighteen months she had never once weighed the
+possibility. She had pondered every other avenue open to women; she had
+considered this work and that, but marriage had not once crossed her
+mind.
+
+She said to herself that she would not allow herself to think of it
+now, probably Clifford had never thought of it, and if he had, he was
+notoriously slow about making up his mind. Her only course was to be
+friendly and dignified, and to meet the issue when it came.
+
+But if--but if it were her fortune to win the affections of this man,
+to take her place, here among her old friends, as their leader and
+head, to entertain in the old house with the cupola, under the plumy
+maple and locust trees--? If Teddy might grow to a happy boyhood, here
+with Sally's children, and friendly, gentle little Ruth Frost might
+find a real mother in her father's young wife--?
+
+Martie's blood danced at the thought. She hardly saw Cliff's
+substantial figure and kindly face for the glamour of definite
+advantages that surrounded him. She would be rich, rich enough to do
+anything and everything for Sally's children, for instance. And what
+pleasure and pride such a marriage would bring to Lydia, and Pa, and
+Sally! And how stupefied Len would be, to have the ugly duckling
+suddenly show such brilliant plumage!
+
+She thought of Rodney and Rose. Rodney was getting stout now, he was
+full of platitudes, heavy and a little tiresome. Rose was still
+birdlike, still sure that what she had and did and said and desired
+were the sum of earthly good. A smile twitched Martie's sober mouth as
+she thought of Rose's congratulations.
+
+Rose would give her a linen shower, with delicious damp little
+sandwiches, and maple mousse, or a dainty luncheon with silk-clad,
+flushed women laughing about the table. And Martie would join the
+club--be its president, some day--
+
+Meanwhile, once more she must wait. A woman's life was largely waiting.
+She had waited on Rodney's young pleasure, years ago; waited for
+Wallace, at rehearsals, or at night; waited for news of Golda; waited
+for Teddy; and for Wallace again and again; waited for Pa's letter and
+the check. Patience, Martie said to her eager heart.
+
+Bright, sisterly, Rose presently came into the office, to put a plump
+little arm about Martie, and give her a laughing kiss. Rose had
+discovered that Martie was at home again, and wanted her to come to
+dinner.
+
+It was one of many little signs of the impending event. Martie had not
+been blind to the whispering and watching all about her. Fanny had
+subtly altered her attitude, even Sally was changed. Now came Rose, to
+prove that the matter was reaching a point where it must be taken
+seriously.
+
+Martie went to the dinner, a little ashamed of herself for doing so.
+Rose had ignored her for more than a year. But just now she could not
+afford to ignore Rose.
+
+She was ashamed of Lydia's innocent pride in the invitation. Sally,
+too, who came to the old house to watch Martie dress, had the old
+attitude. There was an unexpressed feeling in the air that Martie was
+stepping up, and stepping away from them. The younger sister, in her
+filmy black, with her bright hair severely banded, and her quiet
+self-possession, had some element in her that they were content to lack.
+
+Lydia's red, clean little hands were still faintly odorous of chopped
+onion, as she moved them from hook to hook. Sally wore an old plaid
+coat that hung open and showed her shabby little serge gown. The very
+room, where these girls had struggled with so many inadequate garments,
+where they had pressed and pieced and turned a hundred gowns, spoke to
+Martie of her own hungry girlhood.
+
+A motor horn sounded outside. Rodney had come for her. He came in, in
+his big coat, and shook hands with Sally and Lydia. His eyes were on
+Martie as she slipped a black cloak over her floating draperies, and
+the fresh white of throat and arms.
+
+"What have you done to make yourself so pretty?" he asked gallantly,
+when they were in the car.
+
+"Am I pretty?" she asked directly, in a pleased tone.
+
+It was a tone she could not use with Rodney. She was astonished to have
+him fling his arm lightly about her shoulders for a minute.
+
+"Just as pretty as when you broke my heart eight years ago!" he said
+cheerfully. Martie was too much surprised to answer, and as he busied
+himself with the turns of the road, she presently began to speak of
+other things. But when they had driven into the driveway of the new
+Parker house, and had stopped at the side door, he jumped from the car,
+and came around it to help her out.
+
+She felt him lightly detain her, and looked up at him curiously.
+
+"Well, what's the matter--afraid of me?"
+
+"No-o." Martie was a little confused. "But--but hadn't I better go in?"
+
+"Well--what do I get out of it?" he asked, in the old teasing voice of
+the boy who had liked to play "Post-office" and "Clap-in-and-clap-out"
+years ago.
+
+But they were not children now, and there was reproach in the glance
+Martie gave him as she ran up the steps.
+
+Rose, in blue satin, fluttered to meet her and she was conveyed
+upstairs on a sort of cloud of laughter and affection. Everywhere were
+lights and pretty rooms; wraps were flung darkly across the Madeira
+embroidery and filet-work of Rose's bed.
+
+"Other people, Rose?"
+
+"Just the Ellises, Martie, and the Youngers--you don't know them. And a
+city man to balance Florence, and Cliff." Rose, hovering over the
+dressing-table exclaimed ecstatically over Martie's hair. "You look
+lovely--you want your scarf? No, you won't need it--but it's so
+pretty--"
+
+She laid an arm about Martie's waist as they went downstairs.
+
+"You've heard that we've had trouble with the girls?" Rose said, in a
+confidential whisper. "Yes. Ida and May--after all Rodney had done for
+them, too! He did EVERYTHING. It was over a piece of property that
+their grandfather had left their father--I don't know just what the
+trouble was! But you won't mention them to Rod--?"
+
+Everything was perfection, of course. There were cocktails, served in
+the big drawing room, with its one big rug, and its Potocka and le Brun
+looking down from the tinted walls. Martie sat between Rodney and the
+strange man, who was unresponsive.
+
+Rodney, warmed by a delicious dinner, became emotional.
+
+"That was a precious friendship of ours, to me, Martie," he said. "Just
+our boy-and-girl days, but they were happy days! I remember waking up
+in the mornings and saying to myself, 'I'll see Martie to-day!' Yes,"
+said Rodney, putting down his glass, his eyes watering, "that's a
+precious memory to me--very."
+
+"Is Rodney making love to you, Martie?" Rose called gaily, "he does
+that to every one--he's perfectly terrible!"
+
+"How many children has Sally now?" Florence Frost, sickly, emaciated,
+asked with a sort of cluck.
+
+"Four," Martie answered, smiling.
+
+"Gracious!" Florence said, drawing her shawl about her.
+
+"Poor Sally!" Rose said, with the merry laugh that accompanied
+everything she said.
+
+Cliff did not talk to Martie at all, nor to any of the other women. He
+and the other men talked politics after dinner, in real country
+fashion. The women played a few rubbers of bridge, and Rose had not
+forgotten a prize, in tissue-paper and pink ribbon. The room grew hot,
+and the men's cigars scented the close air thickly.
+
+Rose said that she supposed she should be able to offer Martie a
+cigarette.
+
+"It would be my first," Martie said, smiling, and Rose, giving her
+shoulders a quick little impulsive squeeze, said brightly: "Good for
+you! New York hasn't spoiled YOU!".
+
+When at eleven o'clock Martie went upstairs for her wraps, Rose came,
+too, and they had a word in private, in the pretty bedroom.
+
+"Martie--did Cliff say that you and he were going on a--on a sort of
+picnic on Sunday?"
+
+"Why, yes," Martie admitted, surprised, "Sally is going down to the
+city to see Joe, and I'll have the children. I happened to mention it
+to Cliff, and he suggested that he take us all up to Deegan's Point,
+and that we take a lunch."
+
+Innocently commenced, the sentence ended with sudden
+self-consciousness. Martie, putting a scarf over her bronze hair saw
+her own scarlet cheeks in the mirror.
+
+"Yes, I know!" Rose cocked her head on one side, like a pretty bird.
+"Well, now, I have a plan!" she said gaily, "I suggest that Cliff take
+his car, and we take ours, and the Ellises theirs, and we all
+go--children and all! Just a real old-fashioned family picnic."
+
+"I think that would be fun," Martie said, with a slow smile.
+
+"I think it would be fun, too," Rose agreed, "and I've been sort of
+half-planning something of the sort, anyway! And--perhaps, just now,"
+she added sweetly, "it would be a little wiser that way. You see, _I_
+understand you, Martie, and I know we seem awfully small and petty
+here, but--since we ARE in Monroe, why, isn't it better not to give any
+one a chance to talk? Well, about the picnic! Ida and May always bring
+cake; I'll take the fried chicken; and Mrs. Ellis makes a delicious
+salad--"
+
+Martie's heart was beating high, and two little white lines marked the
+firm closing of her lips. Rose's brightly flung suggestion as to the
+impropriety of her going off for the day with Clifford, Teddy, and
+Ruth, was seething like a poison within her. But presently she was
+mechanically promising sandwiches, and Rose was so far encouraged that
+she could give Martie's arm a little squeeze in farewell.
+
+It had seemed such a natural thing to propose, when Sally announced
+that she was to go down to San Francisco for the day. Martie had asked
+for the two older children, and had in all innocence suggested to
+Clifford that they make it a picnic. She carried all day a burning
+resentment of Rose's interference, and something like anger at him for
+consulting Rose.
+
+But she showed nothing. She duly kissed Rose, and thanked her for the
+lovely dinner, and Rodney took her home. Undressing, with moonlight
+pouring in two cool triangles on the shabby carpet, Martie yawned. The
+whole experience had been curiously flat, except for Rose's little
+parting impertinence. But there was no question about it, it had had
+its heartening significance! It was the future Mrs. Clifford Frost who
+had been entertained to-night.
+
+Plans for the picnic proceeded rapidly, and Martie knew, as they
+progressed, that she need only give Cliff his opportunity that day to
+enter into her kingdom. His eagerness to please her, his unnecessary
+calls at the Library to discuss the various details, and the little
+hints and jests that fluttered about her on all sides, were a sure clue.
+
+The morning came when the Frost's big car squeaked down the raw
+driveway from Clipper Lane, with little Ruth, in starched pink gingham,
+beaming on the back seat. Martie, in white, with a daisy-crowned hat
+mashed down over her bright hair, came out from the shadow of the side
+porch, the children and boxes were duly distributed: they were off.
+
+Martie glanced back to see Lydia's slender form, in a severe gray
+percale, under one of the lilacs in the side yard. Mary and Jim Hawkes
+were with her: they all waved hands. Lydia had shaded her face with her
+fingers, and was blinking in the warm June sunlight. Poor Lydia, Martie
+thought, she should have been beside Cliff on this front seat, she
+should have been the happy mother of a sturdy Cliff and Lydia, where
+Ruth and Teddy and the Hawkes children were rioting in the tonneau.
+
+They went to the Parkers', where the other cars had gathered: there was
+much laughing and running about in the bright sunlight. The day would
+be hot--ideal picnic weather. Rodney, directing everybody, managed to
+get close to Martie, who was stacking coats in the car.
+
+"Like old times, Martie! Remember our picnics and parties?"
+
+Martie glanced at him quickly, and smiled a little doubtfully. She
+found nothing to say.
+
+"I often look back," Rodney went on. "And I think sometimes that there
+couldn't have been a sweeter friendship than yours and mine! What good
+times we had! And you and I always understood each other; always, in a
+way, brought out the best of each other." He looked about; no one else
+was in hearing. "Now, I've got the sweetest little wife in the world,"
+he said. "I worked hard, and I've prospered. But there's nothing in my
+life, Martie, that I value more than I do the memory of those old days;
+you believe that, don't you?"
+
+"Indeed I do," Martie said cordially, over a deep amusement that was
+half scorn.
+
+Rodney's next remark was made in a low, intense tone and accompanied by
+a direct look.
+
+"You've grown to be a beautiful woman, Martie!"
+
+"I have?" she laughed uncomfortably.
+
+"And Cliff," he said steadily, "is a lucky fellow!"
+
+He had noticed it, then? It must be--it must be so! But Martie could
+not assume the implied dignity.
+
+"Cliff is a dear!" she said lightly, warmly.
+
+"Rose has seen this coming for a long time," Rodney pursued. "Rose is
+the greatest little matchmaker!"
+
+This was the final irony, thought Martie. To have Rose credited with
+this change in her fortunes suddenly touched her sense of humour. She
+did not speak.
+
+"The past is the past," said Rodney. "You and I had our boy-and-girl
+affair--perhaps it touched us a little more deeply than we knew at the
+time; but that's neither here nor there! But in any case, you know that
+you haven't a warmer or a more devoted friend than I am-you do know
+that, don't you?-and that if ever I can do anything for you, Martie,
+I'll put my hand in the fire to do it!"
+
+And with his eyes actually a little reddened, and his heart glowing
+with generous affection, Rodney lightly pressed her hand, laughed,
+blinked, and turned away. A moment later she heard him call Rose
+"Dearest," as he capably held her dust-coat for his wife, and capably
+buttoned and straightened it. They were starting.
+
+The three cars got away in a straggling line, trailed each other
+through Main Street, and separated for the eleven-mile run. Martie was
+listening with a half-smile to the children's eager chatter, and
+thinking vaguely that Clifford might ask her to-day, or might not ask
+her for three years, when a half-shy, half-husky aside from him, and a
+sudden exchange of glances ended the speculation once and for all.
+
+"Makes me feel a little bit out of it, seeing all the boys with their
+wives," he said, with a rueful laugh.
+
+"Well, DOESN'T it?" she agreed cordially, and she added, in a
+thoughtful voice: "Nothing like happy married life, is there, Cliff?"
+
+"You said it," he answered soberly. "I guess you were pretty happy,
+Martie?" he questioned delicately.
+
+"In some ways--yes," she said. "But I had sorrow and care, too." They
+were on the top of the hill now, and could look back at the roofs of
+Monroe, asleep in Sunday peace, and to the plumy tree-tops over the old
+graveyard where Ma lay sleeping; "asleep," as the worn legend over the
+gateway said, "until resurrection morn." Near the graveyard was the
+"Town farm," big and black, with bent old figures moving about the bare
+garden. "That's one reason why I love it all so, now," she said softly.
+"I'm safe-I'm home again!"
+
+"You've certainly got a lot of friends here, Martie."
+
+"Yes, I know I have!" she said gratefully.
+
+He cleared his throat.
+
+"You've got one that will be mighty sorry to have you ever go away from
+California again." He became suddenly confused and embarrassed by his
+own words.
+
+"I don't suppose--I don't suppose you'd care to--to try it again,
+Martie? I'm considerable older than you are--I know that. But I don't
+believe you'd ever be sorry--home for the boy--"
+
+Colour rushed to her face: voiceless, she looked at him.
+
+"Don't be in any hurry to make up your mind," he said kindly. "You and
+me are old neighbours and friends--I'm not a-going to rush you--"
+
+Still Martie was speechless, honestly moved by his affection.
+
+"It never entered my head to put any one in Mary's place," he said,
+gaining a little ease as he spoke, "until you came back, with that boy
+to raise, and took hold so plucky and good-natured. Ruth and I are
+alone now: I've buried my wife and my brother, and my father and
+mother, and poor Florence ain't going to live long--poor girl. I
+believe you'd have things comfortable, and, as I say--"
+
+"Why, there's only one thing I can say, Cliff," Martie said, finding
+words as his voice began to flounder. "I--I'm glad you feel that way,
+and I hope--I hope I can make you happy. I certainly--I surely am going
+to try to!"
+
+He turned her a quick, smiling glance, and drew a great breath of
+relief.
+
+"Well, sir--then a bargain's a bargain!" he said in great satisfaction.
+"I've been telling myself for several days that you liked me enough to
+try it, but when it came right down to it I--well, I was just about
+scared blue!"
+
+Martie's happy laugh rang out. She laid her smooth fingers over his big
+ones, on the wheel, for a second. "I don't know that I ever felt any
+happier in my life!" the man presently declared. "We may not be
+youngsters, but I don't know but what we can give them all cards and
+spades when it comes to sure-enough, old-fashioned happiness!"
+
+So it was settled, in a few embarrassed and clumsy phrases. Martie's
+heart sang with joy and triumph. She really felt a wave of devotion to
+the big, gentle man beside her; all the future was rose-coloured. She
+had reached harbour at last.
+
+There was time for little more talk before they were at the beach, and
+the excitement of luncheon preparations were upon them. The bay, a
+tidal bay perhaps a mile in circumference, was framed in a fine, sandy
+shore: long, natural jetties of rock had been flung out far into the
+softly rippling water. The tide was making, perhaps a dozen feet below
+the fringe of shells and seaweed, cocoanuts and driftwood that marked
+high-water.
+
+In a group of great rocks the boxes and baskets were piled, and the
+fire kindled. The wind blew a shower of fine sand across the faces of
+the laughing men and women, the children screamed and shouted as they
+flirted with the lazily running waves. Women, opening boxes of neatly
+packed food, exclaimed with full mouths over every contribution but
+their own.
+
+"Martie, this spice cake--! Mine never looks like this. Oh, May, you
+villain! You said you weren't going to bother with the lettuce
+sandwiches; they look perfectly delicious! What's in these?--cream
+cheese and pineapple--they look delicious! Look out for the eggs,
+George!"
+
+Salt sifted from a folded paper, white enamelled cups were set upon a
+level surface of the rock, a quart glass jar held lump sugar. The smoke
+of the fire shifted capriciously, reddening eyes, and bearing with it
+the delicious odour of brewing coffee.
+
+Bending over the cake she was cutting, Martie sensed that Cliff was
+beside her. She dared not give him a betraying word, the others were
+too close, but she sent him an upward glance. His answering glance was
+so full of pride and excitement, Martie felt her soul flood with
+content. Driving home, against the straight-falling spokes of the
+setting sun, they could talk a little, shyly and inconsequently. A
+first dew had fallen, bringing a sharp, sweet odour from the brown
+grass; Monroe seemed a dear and homely place as they came home.
+
+"Were you surprised, Martie?"
+
+"When I first thought of it? I was absolutely stunned! But to-day?--no,
+I wasn't exactly surprised to-day."
+
+"I had no idea, even this morning!" he confessed. She wondered if her
+admission smacked of the designing widow.
+
+"Other people will be!" she said in smiling warning.
+
+He chuckled mischievously.
+
+"Well, won't they?" He smiled for a moment or two in silence, over his
+wheel. Martie made another tiny misstep.
+
+"I suppose there's no reason why I shouldn't tell Lydia--" she began
+musingly.
+
+"Don't tell a soul!" he said quickly. "Not for a while, anyway. When we
+get all our plans made, then we'll tell 'em, and turn around and get
+married before you could say 'Jack Robinson!'"
+
+She felt a little chill; a younger woman, with a younger lover, would
+have had her pouting and her petting for this. But what did it matter?
+Clifford had his first kiss in the dim old parlour with the
+gas-brackets that evening; and after a few days he was as fervent a
+lover as any woman could ask, eager to rush through the necessary
+preparations for their marriage, and to let the world know of his
+happiness.
+
+He was more demonstrative than Martie had anticipated, or than she
+really cared to have him. She found odd girlish reserves deep in her
+being when he put his arms about her. He was never alone with her for
+even a minute without holding her close, turning up her lovely face for
+his smiling kisses, locking a big warm arm about her shoulders.
+
+After some thought, she told Lydia and Sally, on a hot afternoon when
+they were upstairs in the cool window end of the hallway, patiently
+going over boxes and boxes of old letters. She had been absent-minded
+and silent that day, and Sally had once or twice looked at her in
+surprise.
+
+"Girls--listen. I'm going to be married!" she said abruptly, her eyes
+childishly widened, dimples struggling at the corners of her demure
+mouth. Sally leaped up in a whirlwind of letters, and gave a shout of
+delight.
+
+"I knew it! I knew it! You can't tell ME! I said so to Joe. Oh, Mart,
+you old darling, I'm so glad--I'm gladder than I can say!"
+
+"Well, dear, I hope you'll be just as happy as possible!" said Lydia's
+wilted voice. Martie kissed her cheek, and she returned the kiss. "I
+can't say I'm surprised, for nothing very much surprises me now," Lydia
+went on. "Cliff was simply heartbroken when Mary died, and he said then
+to Angela that there would never be another woman in his life, but of
+course we all know how much that means, and perhaps it's better as it
+is. I often wish I was constituted as most people seem to be
+nowadays--forget, and rush on to something else; that's the idea! But I
+hope you'll be very happy, Martie; you'll certainly have everything in
+the world to make you happy, but that doesn't always do it, of course.
+I believe I'll take these letters of Ma's to Aunt Sally downstairs;
+they might get mixed in with the others and burned. I suppose I'm not
+much in the mood for weddings and jollifications now, what with all
+this change bringing back--our loss. If other people can be happy, I
+hope they will; but sometimes I feel that I'll be glad to get out of it
+all! I'll leave you two girls to talk wedding, and if you need me
+again, call me."
+
+"Isn't she the limit!" Sally said indignantly, when Lydia had trailed
+away. "Just when you're so happy! For Heaven's sake tell me all about
+it, and when it's going to be, and how it began, and everything!"
+
+Martie was glad to talk. She liked to hear Sally's praise of Cliff; she
+had much to praise in him herself. She announced a quiet wedding;
+indeed they were not going to spread the news of the engagement until
+all their plans were made. Perhaps a week or two before the event they
+would tell a few intimate friends, and be safely away on their
+honeymoon before the village was over the first gasp.
+
+"Don't mind Lyd," Sally said consolingly. "She'll have a grand talk
+with Pa, and feel martyred, and talk it over with Lou and Clara, and
+come to the conclusion that it's all for the best. Poor Lyd, do you
+remember how she used to laugh and dance about the house when we were
+little? Do you remember the Spider-web Party?"
+
+"Do you remember the pink dress, Sally? I used to think Lyd was the
+loveliest thing in creation in that dress!"
+
+Sally was flushed and dimpling; she was not listening.
+
+"Mart! I think it's the most exciting thing--! Shall you tell Teddy?"
+
+"Sally, I don't dare." A shadow fell across Martie's bright face. In
+these days she was wistfully tender and gentle with her son. Teddy
+would not always be first in her consideration; there might be serious
+rivals some day. Life was changing for little unconscious Teddy.
+
+He would not remember his father, and the little sister laughing in her
+high-chair, and the cold, dirty streets, and the shabby, silent mother
+with her busy, tired hands and her frozen heart. It was all gone, like
+a dream of struggle and shame, love and hate, joy and suffering.
+
+One day, with Teddy and Clifford, she went up to the old house. Ruth,
+clean and mannerly, raised her innocent girl's face for her new
+mother's kiss, for Ruth was in the secret. Martie liked Ruth, a simple,
+normal little person who played "jacks" and "houses" with her friends
+under the lilac trees, and had a "best dress" and loved "Little Women"
+with a shy passion. Martie foresaw only a pleasant relationship with
+the child. What she lacked in imagination was more than made up in
+sense. Ruth would graduate, marry, have children, as placidly as a
+stout and sturdy little cow. But Martie and Ruth would always love,
+even if they did not understand, each other.
+
+The house was old-fashioned: big double parlours, big folding doors,
+and one enormous square bathroom on the second floor, for the needs of
+all the house. The cheerful, orderly pantries smelt of painted wood;
+the kitchen had cost old Polly two or three unnecessary miles of
+walking every month of her twenty-six years' tenancy. Martie liked the
+garden best, and the old stables painted white. She loved the rich
+mingled scents of wallflower and alyssum and lemon verbena; and, as
+they walked about, she tucked a velvet plume of dark heliotrope into
+the belt of her thin white gown. "My first colour!" she said to
+Clifford.
+
+Ruth assumed charming, older-sister airs with Teddy. She laughed at his
+comments, and quoted him to Martie: "He says he's going to learn to
+ride Whitey!" "He says he doesn't like such big houses!"
+
+Clifford opened doors and smiled at Martie's interest. She could see
+that he loved every inch of the old place. She saw herself everywhere,
+writing checks at the old walnut desk, talking with Polly in the
+pantry. She could sow Shirley poppies in the bed beneath the side
+windows; she could have Mrs. Hunter, the village sewing woman,
+comfortably established here in the sewing-room for weeks, if she
+liked, making ginghams for Ruth and Ruth's new mother.
+
+When those days came Clifford would gradually abandon this unwelcome
+role of lover, and be her kindly, middle-aged old friend again.
+Sometimes, in the new shrinking reluctance she felt when they were
+alone, she wondered what had become of the old Clifford. There was
+something vaguely offending, something a little undignified, about this
+fatuous, eager, elderly man who could so poorly simulate patience. He
+was not passionate--she might have forgiven him that. But he was
+assuming passion, assuming youth, happily egotistical.
+
+He was fifty-one: he had won a beautiful woman hardly more than half
+his age. He wanted to talk about it, to have the conversation always
+congratulatory and flattering. He had the attitude of a young husband,
+without his youth, to which everything is forgiven.
+
+Altogether, Martie found her engagement strangely trying. Rose,
+instantly suspicious, was presently told of it, and Martie's sisters
+and Rose planned an announcement luncheon for early July. Martie
+thought she would really be glad when the fuss and flurry was over.
+
+Long familiar with money scarcity, she wondered sometimes just what her
+financial arrangement with her new husband would be. Clifford was the
+richest man in Monroe. Not a shop would refuse her credit; nor a woman
+in town feel so sure of her comfort and safety.
+
+But what else? Bitter as her long dependence had been, and widowed and
+experienced as she was, she dared not ask. There was something
+essentially indelicate in any talk of an allowance now. She would
+probably do what was done by almost all the wives she knew: charge,
+spend little, and when she must have money, approach her husband at
+breakfast or dinner: "Oh, Clifford, I need about ten dollars. For the
+man who fixed the surrey, dear, and then if I take all the children in
+to the moving pictures, they'll want ice-cream. And I ought to send
+flowers to Rose; we don't charge there. Although I suppose I could send
+some of our own roses just as well!"
+
+And Clifford, like other husbands, would take less money than was
+suggested from his pocket and say: "How's seven? You can have more if
+you want it, but I haven't any more here! But if you like, send Ruth
+down to the Bank--"
+
+"What a fool I am!" Martie mused. "What does independence amount to,
+anyway? If I ever had it, I'd probably be longing to get back into
+shelter again.
+
+"Teddy, do you understand that Mother is going to marry Uncle Cliff?"
+she asked the child. He rested his little body against her, one arm
+about her neck, as he stood beside her chair.
+
+"Yes, Mother," he answered unenthusiastically. After a second's thought
+he began to twist a white button on her blouse. "And then are we going
+back to New York?" he asked.
+
+"No, Loveliness, we stay here." She looked at the child's downcast
+face. "Why, Teddy?" she urged.
+
+Ever since he could speak at all, he had had a fashion of whispering to
+her anything that seemed to him especially important or precious, even
+when, as now, they were quite alone. He put his lips to her ear.
+
+"What is it, dearest? I can't hear you!"
+
+"I said," he said softly, his lips almost touching her cheek, "that I
+would like to go back to New York just with you, and have you take me
+out in the snow again, and have you let me make chocolate custard, the
+way you always did--for just our own supper, our two selves. I like all
+my aunts and every one here, but I get lonesome."
+
+"Lonesome?" she echoed, trying to laugh over a little pang.
+
+"Lonesome--for you!" he answered simply. Martie caught him to her and
+smothered him in her embrace.
+
+"You little troubadour!" she laughed, with her kiss.
+
+The three sisters had never been so much together in their lives as
+they were when the time came to demolish the old home. Sally, with a
+train of dancing children, came up every morning after breakfast, and
+she and Martie and Lydia patiently plodded through store-rooms, attics,
+and closets that had not been disturbed for years.
+
+Lydia's constant cry was: "Ah, don't destroy that; I remember that ever
+since I was a baby!" Sally was more apt to say: "I believe I could use
+this; it's old, but it could be put in order cheaper than buying new!"
+Martie was the iconoclast.
+
+"Now here's this great roll of silk from Grandmother Price's wedding
+dress; what earthly good is this to any one?" she would demand briskly.
+"And here's the patchwork quilt Ma started when Len was a baby, with
+all the patches pinned together! Why should we keep these things? And
+Lydia's sketch-books, when she was taking lessons, and the old
+air-tight stove, and Pa's brother's dentist chair--it's hopelessly
+old-fashioned now! And what about these piles and piles of Harper's and
+Scribner's, and the broken washstand that was in Belle's, room and the
+curtains, that used to be in the back hall? I move we have a bonfire
+and keep it going all day--"
+
+"I'd forgotten that the old rocking-horse was here," Sally said one
+day, with pleasure. "The boys will love it! And do you know, Lyd, I was
+thinking that this little table with the leg mended and painted white
+wouldn't be a bit bad in my hall. I really need a table there, for Joe
+brings in his case, or the children get the mail--we'd have lots of use
+for it. And here's the bedside table, that's an awfully good thing to
+have, because in case of illness--"
+
+"Heavens!" said Martie. "She's trying to break something to us; she
+suspects that there may be an illness some day in her house--"
+
+"Oh, I do not!" said Sally, flushing and giggling in the old way.
+
+"Len's first little suit," Lydia mused. "Dear me--dear me! And this old
+table-cover; I remember when that was new! And here are Aunt Carrie's
+things; she sent Ma a great box of them when she died; look, Sally, the
+old-fashioned sleeves with fibre-chamois in them! This box is full of
+hats; this was my Merry Widow hat; it was always so pretty I hated to
+destroy it, but I suppose it really isn't much good! I wonder if some
+poor woman could use it. And these are all old collars of Pa's and
+Len's--it seems a shame to throw them away. I wonder if we could find
+some one who wears this size? Martie, don't throw that coat over there
+in the pile for the fire--it's a good piece of serge, and that cape
+style may come in again!"
+
+Absorbed and interested, the three worked among memories. Sometimes for
+an hour at a time there was silence in the attic. Martie, with a faded
+pink gingham dress spread across her lap, would be eight again,
+trotting off to school with Sally, and promising Ma to hold Len's hand
+when they crossed Main Street. How clean and trim, how ready for the
+day, she had felt, when her red braid was tied with a brown ribbon, and
+this little garment firmly buttoned down the back, and pressed with a
+great sweep of Ma's arms to crush the too stiffly starched skirt!
+
+Sally observed amusedly, perhaps a little pityingly, that Lydia wanted
+everything. There was nothing in the old house for which Lydia did not
+expect to have immediate need in the new. This little table for the
+porch, this extra chair for the maid's room, this mirror, this
+mattress, this ladder. The older sister reserved enough furniture to
+fill the new house twice over; she would presently pack the new rooms
+with cumbersome, useless possessions, and go to her death believing
+herself the happier for having them.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+The Eastern editor who had taken her first article presently wrote her
+again. Martie treasured his letter with burning, secret pride, and with
+perhaps a faint, renunciatory pang. She had pushed in her opening wedge
+at last, too late! For no trifling literary success could change the
+destined course of Mrs. Clifford Frost.
+
+This was the letter:
+
+DEAR MRS. BANNISTER: We are constantly receiving more letters from
+women who read "Give Her A Job," and find that what you had to say upon
+an apparently well-worn subject struck a most responsive chord. Can you
+not give us another two thousand words upon this, or a similar subject?
+This type of article is always most welcome.
+
+That was all. But it inspired Martie to try again. After all, even as a
+rich man's wife, she might amuse herself in this way as well as another.
+
+Between the move from the old house, her wedding plans, the claims of
+her husband-to-be, and the Library work, she was busy now, every
+instant of the day. Yet she found time, as only a busy woman can, for
+writing, and put a new ardour into her attempts, because of the little
+beginning of encouragement. Hoping and fearing, she presently sent a
+second article on its way.
+
+One July evening she stayed rather late at the Library working on a
+report. Clifford was delayed in Pittsville, and would not see her until
+after dinner; the rare opportunity was too precious to lose. In a day
+or two all Monroe would know of her new plans: in six weeks she would
+be Clifford's wife.
+
+When the orderly sheets had been put into a long envelope, Martie
+pinned on her white hat, and stepped into the level rays of sunset
+light that were pouring into Main Street. The little fruit stand
+opposite seemed wilted in the heat; hot little summer breezes were
+tossing chaff and papers about the street.
+
+Martie's eyes instantly found an unexpected sight: a low, rakish motor
+car drawn up to the curb. She had not seen it before in Monroe, nor did
+she recognize the man who sat on the seat next the driver's seat, with
+his hat pulled over his eyes.
+
+The driver, a handsome big fellow of perhaps forty or more, had just
+jumped from the car, and now came toward her. She smiled into a clever,
+unfamiliar face that yet seemed oddly recognizable. He asked her
+something.
+
+"I beg your pardon?" she had to say, her eyes moving quickly from him
+to his companion, who had turned about in the seat, and was watching
+them. Her heart stopped beating for a second, then, commenced to race.
+Her colour rose in a radiant flood. With three swift steps she had
+passed the big man, and was at the curb, and leaning over the car.
+
+"John--!" she stammered. "My dear--my dear!"
+
+The man in the car turned upon her the smile she knew so well: a
+child's half-merry, half-wistful smile, from sea-blue eyes in fair
+lashes. Time vanished, and Martie felt that she might have seen it
+yesterday; have felt yesterday the muscular grip of John Dryden's hand.
+Bewildered at their own emotion, laughing and confused, their fingers
+clung together.
+
+"Hello--Martie!" he said, in a shaken voice, his blue eyes suddenly
+blazing as he saw her. Martie's eyes were wet, her delight turning her
+cheeks to rose. John did not speak, unless his burning eyes spoke; and
+Martie for a few minutes was hardly intelligible. It was the stranger
+who spoke.
+
+"I'm Dean Silver, Mrs. Bannister--you don't have to be introduced to
+me, because I know John here. You're his favourite topic, you know."
+
+"Dean Silver!" Martie smiled bewilderedly at the novelist; she knew
+that name! He was a writer with twenty books to his credit. He had a
+ranch somewhere in California; he spent his winters there. Some hazy
+recollection struggled for recognition.
+
+"But, John!" she laughed. "Here in Monroe! My dear, you'll never know
+what it meant to glance up and see you--and you look so well! And
+you're famous, too; isn't it wonderful! And, tell me, what brings you
+to California!"
+
+The quick, authoritative glance was delightfully familiar, yet somehow
+new.
+
+"Why, you brought me, of course, Martie," he said unsmilingly, as if
+any other supposition would have been absurd. He had not spoken before;
+she knew now that she had hungered for his rather deep, ready voice.
+Her colour came up, her heart gave a curious twist, and she dropped her
+eyes.
+
+"Dryden and I have been batching it together in New York," said Dean
+Silver. "My wife's been here since April with her mother and our kid.
+When I came on, I got Dryden here to come, too. They want me to take a
+long sea trip: I hope you'll help me persuade him to come, too. He's
+trying to double-cross me on it, I think. He said he'd come as far as
+California, and then see how things looked. So we shipped the car last
+month, and left New York a week ago to-day."
+
+"Well, Monroe is honoured," Martie smiled, amused, fluttered, a little
+confused by this open recognition of John's feeling. "But now that
+you're here, I don't know quite what to do with you!"
+
+"There's a hotel?" asked the novelist.
+
+"Oh, it's not that. I'm only anxious to make the most of you," said
+Martie. "We've more than enough room at our house! But, like poor Fanny
+Squeers, I do so palpitate!"
+
+"Palpitate away!" said Dean Silver. "We're in your hands. You can send
+us off right now, or let us take you to dinner somewhere, or direct us
+to the hotel--for three thousand miles our main idea was to find you,
+and we've done it!"
+
+"Well, but JOHN!" Martie was still dazed and exulting. "It's so GOOD to
+see you!"
+
+"I had to see you," he said, in his simple way, his eyes never leaving
+her.
+
+"But now, let me plan!" she said, with an excited laugh. "If you'll let
+me get in the car with you, and--and let me see, we'd better get
+something extra for company--"
+
+"Now, that's just what you shan't do," Dean Silver said decisively. "I
+don't propose to have you--"
+
+"Oh, she likes it," John assured him, with his dreamy air that was yet
+so positive. "Don't waste time, Dean."
+
+Martie laughed; John sat between herself and the novelist in the wide
+seat. He turned his head so that she was always under the fire of his
+adoring eyes. And in the old way he laughed, thrilled, exulted in
+everything she said.
+
+Half an hour later, as gaily as if she had known them both all her
+life, she introduced them to Pa. Pa, whose youngest daughter was just
+now in high favour, was mildly pleased with the invasion. This
+impromptu hospitality smacked of prosperity, of worldliness. He went
+stiffly into the study with John, to bore the poet with an old volume
+about California: "From the Padres to the Pioneers."
+
+Martie, cheerfully setting the dining table, kept a brisk conversation
+moving with Dean Silver, who sat smoking on the side porch.
+
+Presently she came put with an empty glass bowl, which she set down
+beside him. He followed her down into the tipsy brick paths, under the
+willows, while she gathered velvet wallflowers to fill it.
+
+"You're very clever at this village sort of thing," the writer said.
+"And I must say I like it myself. Old-fashioned street full of kids
+streaming in for ice-cream, garden with stocks and what-you-call-'ems
+all blooming together--you know, I had a sort of notion you weren't
+half as nice as you are!"
+
+Martie laughed, pleased at the frank audacity.
+
+"You fit into it all so pleasantly!" he expanded his thought.
+
+"I don't know why you say that," she answered, surprised. "I was born
+here. I belong here. I lived for years in New York without being able
+to demonstrate that I could do anything better!"
+
+"Dryden has a great idea of what you can do," Silver suggested.
+
+"Oh, well, John!" she laughed maternally. "If you've been listening to
+John--"
+
+"I've HAD to listen to him," the novelist said mildly.
+
+"Tell me," she said suddenly, "I don't want to say the awkward thing to
+him--has he got his divorce?"
+
+He looked at her, amazed.
+
+"Don't you correspond?"
+
+"Twice a year, perhaps."
+
+Dean Silver flung away his cigarette, and sunk his hands in his pockets.
+
+"Certainly he's divorced," he said briefly.
+
+Martie's heart thumped. The flowers in her hands, she stood staring
+away from him, unseeing.
+
+"I hope you'll forgive me--I feel like a fool touching the thing at
+all," Dean Silver said, after a silence. "But I thought that there was
+some sort of an understanding between you."
+
+"Oh, no!" Martie half-whispered, with a fluttered breath.
+
+"There isn't?" he asked, in a tone of keen protest.
+
+"Oh, no!"
+
+The novelist whistled a few notes and shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Well, then, there isn't," he said philosophically. He stooped to pick
+a fragrant spike of mignonette, and put it in his buttonhole. When he
+began speaking again, he did not look at Martie. "A few of us have come
+to know Dryden well, this winter," he said gravely. "He's a rare
+fellow, Mrs. Bannister--a big man, and he's got his field to himself.
+You wouldn't believe me if I told you what a fuss they've been making
+over him--back there, and how little it matters to him. He's going a
+long way. You--you've got to be kind to him, my dear girl."
+
+"I'm a Catholic, and he's a divorced man," Martie said, turning
+troubled eyes toward him. "I never thought of him in that way!"
+
+Dean Silver raised his eyebrows.
+
+"People are still believing that sort of thing, are they?"
+
+"Only about a hundred million!" she answered, drily in her turn.
+
+The man laughed shortly.
+
+"Sweet complication!" he observed.
+
+"More than that," Martie said hurriedly, "I'm engaged to be married to
+the president of the bank here, in about six weeks!"
+
+Their eyes met steadily for a full minute.
+
+"I devoutly trust you are not serious?" said Dean Silver then.
+
+"Oh, but I am!" she said, with a nervous laugh.
+
+For answer he merely shrugged his shoulders again. In silence they
+turned toward the house.
+
+"That is an actual settled fact, is it?" Silver asked, when they were
+at the steps.
+
+"Why, yes!" Martie answered, feeling a strange inclination toward
+tears. "I've been here for a year and a half," she added lamely. "I've
+not seen John--I tell you I never thought of him as anything but
+Adele's husband! And Clifford--the man I am to marry--is a good man,
+and it means a home for life for my boy and me--and it means the
+greatest pleasure to my father and sisters--"
+
+"I think I never heard such a damnable set of reasons for a beautiful
+woman's marriage!" Silver said, as she paused.
+
+Martie could find no answer. She was excited, bewildered, thrilled, all
+at once. She felt that another word would be too much. Silently she
+picked up her bowl and her flowers, and crossed the porch to the house.
+
+Lydia, coming in late from a meeting of the Fair Committee, was
+speechless. In a pregnant silence she lent cold aid to her audacious
+sister. The big bed in Len's room was made, the bureau spread with a
+clean, limp towel. Pauline was interviewed; she brightened. Dean Silver
+was from Prince Edward's Island, too, it seemed. Pauline could make
+onion soup, and rolls were set, thanks be! She could open preserves;
+she didn't suppose that sliced figs were good enough for a company
+dessert.
+
+They had the preserves, and the white figs, too; figs that Teddy and
+Martie had knocked that morning from the big tree in the yard. Lydia
+noticed with resentment that Pa had really brightened perceptibly under
+the unexpected stimulus. It was Lydia who said mildly, almost
+reproachfully, "I'm sorry that I have to give you a rather small
+napkin, Mr. Dryden; we had company to dinner last night, and I find
+we're a little short--"
+
+John hardly heard her; he saw nothing but Martie, and only rarely moved
+his eyes from her, or spoke to any one else. He glowed at her lightest
+word, laughed at her mildest pleasantry; he frequently asked her family
+if she was not "wonderful."
+
+This was the attitude of that old lover of her dreams, and in spite of
+amusement and trepidation and nervous consciousness that she was
+hopelessly entangling her affairs, Martie's heart began to swell, and
+her senses to feel creeping over their alertness a deadly and delicious
+languor. She had been powerless all her life: she thrilled to the
+knowledge of her power now.
+
+Dean Silver easily kept the conversation moving. They learned that he
+had been overworking, had been warned by his physician that he must
+take a rest. So he and John were off for the Orient: he himself had
+always wanted to sail up the Nile, and to see Benares.
+
+"John, what a year in fairyland!" Martie exclaimed.
+
+"Well, that's what I tell him," said the novelist. "But he isn't at all
+sure he wants to go!"
+
+As John merely gave Martie an unmistakable look at this, she tried
+hurriedly for a careless answer.
+
+"John, you would be mad not to go!"
+
+"You and I will talk it over after awhile," he suggested, with an
+enigmatic smile.
+
+This was terrible. Martie gave one startled look at Lydia, who had
+compressed her mouth into a thin line of disapproval. Lydia was
+obviously thinking of Cliff, who might come in later. Martie found
+herself unable to think of Cliff.
+
+They had coffee in the garden, in the still summer dusk. Teddy rioted
+among the bushes, as alert and strategic as was his gray kitten. John
+sat silent beside Martie, and whenever she glanced at him she met his
+deep smile. Lydia preserved a forbidding silence, but Malcolm's
+suspicions of his younger daughter were pleasantly diverted by the
+novelist. Dean Silver was probing into the early history of the State.
+
+"But there must have been silver and gold mines up as far as this,
+then; aren't you in the gold belt?"
+
+"In the year 1858," Malcolm began carefully, "a company was formed here
+for the purpose of investigating the claims made by--"
+
+John finished his coffee with a gulp, and walked across the dim grass
+to Martie, and she rose without a word.
+
+"Martie, isn't it Teddy's bedtime?" asked Lydia. John frowned faintly
+at her.
+
+"Can't you put him to bed?" he asked directly. Lydia's cool cheek
+flushed.
+
+"Why, yes--I will--" she answered confusedly. Martie called her thanks
+over her shoulder as they walked away. She was reminded of the day she
+had called on John at his office.
+
+Quick and shaken, the beating of her heart bewildered her; she hardly
+knew where they walked, or how they began to talk. The velvety summer
+night was sweet with flowers; the moon would be late, but the sky was
+high and dark, and thick with stars. In the silver glimmer the town
+lights, and the dim eye of the dairy, far up on the range, burned red.
+Children were shouting somewhere, and dogs barking; now and then the
+other mingled noises were cut across by the clear, mellow note of a
+motor car's horn.
+
+They came to the lumber-yard by the river, and went in among the
+shadowy piles of planks. The starry dome was arched, infinitely far and
+yet friendly, above them; the air here was redolent of the clean wood.
+From houses near by, but out of sight beyond the high wall, they heard
+occasional voices: a child was called, a wire-door slammed. But they
+were alone.
+
+John was instantly all the acknowledged if not the accepted lover. Once
+fairly inside the fence, she found her heart beating madly against his
+own; as tall as he, she tried to deny him her lips. Her arms were
+pinioned. Man and woman breathed fast.
+
+"Martie--my wonderful--my beautiful--girl! I never lived until now!" he
+said after a silence.
+
+"But, John--John--" He had taken her off her guard; she was stammering
+like a school-girl. "Please, dear, you mustn't--not now. I want to talk
+to you--I must. Won't you wait until we have had a talk--please--you're
+frightening me!"
+
+His hold was instantly loosed.
+
+"My dearest child, I wouldn't frighten you for anything in the world.
+Let us have the talk--here, climb up here! It was only--realizing--what
+I've been dreaming about all these months! I'm flesh and blood, you
+know, dear. I shall not feel myself alive--you know that!--until you
+are in my arms, my own--my wife."
+
+She had seated herself on the top of the pile; now he sat on the ledge
+that was a few inches lower, and laid his arms across her knees, so
+that his hands were clasped in both her own. Her senses were swimming,
+her heart itself seemed turned to liquid fire, and ran trembling
+through her body.
+
+"My wife!" John said, eager eyes fairly devouring her. "My glorious
+wife, the loveliest woman in the world! Do you know what it means,
+Martie? Do you know what it means, after what we both have known?"
+
+The sight of his wistful, daring smile in the starlight, the touch of
+his big, eager hands, and the sound of the odd, haunting voice turned
+the words to magic. She tightened her fingers on his.
+
+"I bought the Connecticut house on the river," he said presently. "It
+belonged to a carpenter, a fine fellow; but the railroad doesn't go
+there, and he and his wife wanted to go to a bigger place. Silver and I
+went up and saw it, but I didn't want to do anything until you came.
+But there are rocks, you know--" Hearing something between a laugh and
+a sigh, he stopped short. "Rocks," he repeated, "you know all those
+places are rocky!"
+
+"I know, dearest boy!"
+
+The term overwhelmed him. She heard him try to go on; he choked,
+glanced at her smilingly, and shook his head. A second later he laid
+his face against her hands, and she felt that it was wet.
+
+The clock in the Town Hall struck nine--struck ten, and still they sat
+on, sometimes talking, sometimes staring up at the steadily beating
+stars. Quiet fell upon Monroe, lights moved in the little houses and
+went out. There was a little stir when the crowd poured out from the
+moving pictures: voices, shouts, laughter, then silence again.
+
+Suddenly Martie decreed their return to the house. But the ecstasy of
+finding each other, again was too new. They passed the dark old gateway
+to the sunken garden, and walked on, talking thirstily, drinking deep
+of the joy of words.
+
+Hand in hand they went up the hill, and time and space might have
+equally been demolished. That hill had seemed a long climb to Martie
+years ago: to-night it seemed a dream hill, she and John were so soon
+at its little summit.
+
+Below them lay the dark village and the furry tops of trees flooded
+with gray moonlight. The odours of a summer night crept out to meet
+them, odours of flowers and dew-wet, sunburned grass. The roadside
+fences were wreathed with wild blackberry vines that took weird shapes
+in the dark. In the idle fields spreading oaks threw shadows of inky
+blackness.
+
+Martie hardly thought of Clifford. Across her spinning senses an
+occasional thought of him crept, but he had no part in to-night.
+To-morrow she must end this dream of exquisite fulfillment, to-morrow,
+somehow, she must send John away. But to-night was theirs.
+
+Their talk was that of lovers, whose only life is in each other's
+presence. They leaned on an old fence, above the town, and whether they
+were grave, or whether Martie's gay laugh and his eager echoing laugh
+rang out, the enchantment held them alike.
+
+It was after one o'clock when they came slowly down the hill, and let
+themselves silently into the shadowy garden. Martie fled noiselessly
+past the streak of light under Lydia's door, gained her own room, and
+blinked at her lighted gas.
+
+The mirror showed her a pale, exalted face, with glittering blue eyes
+under loosened bronze hair. She was cold, excited, tired, and ecstatic.
+She moved the sprawling Teddy to the inside of the bed, stooping to lay
+her cold cheek and half-opened lips to his flushed little face. She got
+into a wrapper, her hair falling free on her shoulders, and sat
+dreaming and remembering.
+
+Lydia, in her gray wrapper, came in, with haggard, reproachful eyes.
+Lydia was pale, too, but it was the paleness of fatigue, and had
+nothing in common with Martie's starry pallor.
+
+"Martie, do you know what time it is?"
+
+"Lyd--I know it's late!"
+
+"Late? It's two o'clock."
+
+"Not really?" Martie bunched her splendid hair with a white hand under
+each ear, and faced her affronted sister innocently.
+
+"Don't say 'not really!'" Lydia, who happened to hate this expression,
+which as a matter of fact Martie only used in moments of airy
+rebellion, said sharply: "If that man hasn't any sense, you ought to
+have!"
+
+"We used to be intimate friends a few years ago," Martie offered
+mildly. "We had a lot to say."
+
+"A lot that couldn't be said before Pa and me, I suppose?" Lydia asked
+bitingly. Martie was silent. "What do you propose to tell Cliff of this
+delightful friendship?" Lydia pursued. "And how long a visit do your
+friends propose to make?"
+
+"Only until to-morrow. Mrs. Silver wants me to visit them, you know, at
+Glen Mary."
+
+"Do you intend to go?" Lydia asked stonily.
+
+"Well, I suppose not. But it would be a wonderful experience, of
+course. But I suppose not." Martie sighed heavily. "I really hadn't
+thought it out," she pleaded.
+
+"I should think you hadn't! I never heard anything like it," Lydia
+said. "I should think the time had come when you really might think it
+out--I don't know what things are coming to--"
+
+"Oh, Lyddy dear, don't be so tiresome!" Martie said rudely. Lydia at
+once left the room, with a short goodnight, but the interrupted mood of
+memories and dreams did not return. Martie sat still a long time,
+wrapped in the blanket she caught from the bed, staring vaguely into
+space.
+
+"I've got to think it all out," she told herself, "I mustn't
+make--another mistake."
+
+And yet when she crept in beside Teddy, and flung her arm about him,
+she would not let the half-formed phrase stand. The step that had
+brought her splendid boy to her arms was not a mistake.
+
+She slept lightly, and was up at five o'clock. Teddy, just shifting
+from the stage when nothing could persuade him to sleep in the morning
+to the stage when nothing could persuade him to wake, merely rolled
+over when she left him. Martie, bathed, brushed, dressed in white, went
+into the garden. They had arranged no meeting, but John came toward her
+under the pepper trees as she closed the door.
+
+Again they walked, this time in morning freshness. Martie showed him
+the school gate, with "Girls" lettered over it, where she had entered
+for so many years. They walked past the church, and up toward the
+hills. She said she must get home in time to help Pauline with
+breakfast for the augmented family, and John went with her into the old
+kitchen, and cut peaches and mixed muffins with the enthusiasm of an
+expert, talking all the time.
+
+"But tell me about Adele, John!" she said suddenly, when Lydia and her
+father had left the breakfast table, and they two were alone again.
+"How do you EXPLAIN it?"
+
+"Oh, well!" He brought his mind with an obvious effort to Adele. "We
+had sort of a hard time of it--she wasn't well, and I wasn't. Her
+sister came on--she's--she's quite a woman!" Evidently still a little
+impressed by some memory, he made a wild gesture with his hands. "She
+thought I didn't understand Adele?" he went on questioningly. "After
+she left, Adele simply went away. She went to a boarding-house where
+she knew the woman, and when I went there to see her she told me that
+it was all over. That's what she said: it was all over. I went to see
+the doctor, and he didn't deny that they had gone somewhere--Atlantic
+City, I think it was, together! She asked for a divorce, and I gave it
+to her, and her sister came on to stay with her for the time she got
+it. She seemed awfully unhappy. It was just before my book was taken.
+Her sister said she was unlucky, and I guess she was--poor Adele!"
+
+"And there was never any fight, or any special cause?"
+
+"Oh, no!" He smiled his odd and charming smile. "But I think I bored
+her!" he said. "I do bore most people! But most people don't--don't
+understand me, Martie," he went on, with a quality almost like hunger
+in his eyes and voice. "And that's why I have been longing and longing
+to see you again. YOU understand! And with you I always feel as if I
+could talk, as if what I said mattered, as if--well, as if I had been
+on a hot desert walk, and came suddenly to trees, and shade, and a
+bubbling spring!"
+
+"You poet!" she smiled. But a pang shook her heart. It was sweet, it
+was perilously sweet, but it could not be for long now.
+
+"John," she began, when like a happy child he had loitered out with her
+to feed the chickens, "I've got something to tell you. I'm sorry."
+
+Scattering crumbled cornbread on the pecked, bare ground under the
+willows, he gave her a confiding look. Her heart stopped.
+
+"It's about Mr. Frost," Martie went on, "I've known him all my life;
+he's one of the nicest men here. I'm--I'm engaged to him, John!"
+
+His hand arrested, John looked at her steadily. There was a silence.
+
+"How do you mean--to be married?" he asked tonelessly, without stirring.
+
+Martie nodded. Under the willows, and in the soft fog of the morning,
+the thing suddenly seemed a tragedy.
+
+"Aren't you," he said simply, "aren't you going to marry me?"
+
+His tone brought the tears to her eyes.
+
+"I can't!" she whispered. "John, I'm sorry!"
+
+"Sorry," he echoed dully. "But--but I don't understand. You can't mean
+that you have promised--that you expect--to marry any one else but me?"
+And as Martie again allowed a silence to fall, he took a few steps away
+from her, walking like a person blinded by sudden pain. "I don't
+understand," he said again. "I never thought of anything but that we
+belonged to each other--I've thought of it all the time! And now you
+tell me--I can't believe it! Is it settled? Is it all decided?"
+
+"My family and his family know," Martie said.
+
+"Oh, but Martie--you can't mean that!" he burst out in agony. "What
+have I done! What have I done--to have you do this! You don't love him!"
+
+"John," she said steadily, catching his hands, "even if I were free,
+you aren't, dear. We could never be married while Adele lives."
+
+He turned his steady gaze upon her.
+
+"Then last night--" he asked gravely.
+
+"Last night I was a fool, John--I was all to blame! I'm so sorry--I'm
+so terribly sorry!"
+
+"I thought last night--" He turned away under the willows, and she
+anxiously followed him. "You let me think you cared!"
+
+"John, I do care!"
+
+"You SAID you did!"
+
+"I don't know what was the matter with me," Martie said wretchedly, "I
+was so carried away by seeing you so suddenly--and thinking of old
+times--and of all we had been through together--"
+
+"But it wasn't of that we talked, Martie!"
+
+"I know." Her head drooped. "I know!"
+
+"I'm so sorry," he said, bewildered and hurt. "I don't understand you.
+I can't believe that you are going to marry that man, whoever he is;
+you didn't say anything about him last night! Who is he--what right has
+he got to come into it?"
+
+"He's a good and honourable man, John, and he asked me. And I said yes."
+
+"You said yes--loving me?"
+
+"Oh, John dear--you don't understand--"
+
+"No," he said heavily, "I confess I don't."
+
+The tone, curt and cold, brought tears to her eyes, and he saw them.
+Instantly he was all penitence.
+
+"Martie--ah, don't cry! Don't cry for me! Don't--I tell you, or I shall
+rush off somewhere--I can't see you cry! I'll try to understand. But
+you see last night--last night made me hope that you might care for me
+a little--I couldn't sleep, Martie, I was so happy! But I won't think
+of that. Now tell me, I'm quite quiet, you see. Tell me. You don't mean
+that you don't--feel anything about it?"
+
+"John," she said simply, "I don't know whether I love you or not. I
+know that--that last night was one of the wonderful times of my life.
+But it came on me like a thunderbolt--I never felt that way
+before--even when I was first engaged, even when I was married! But I
+don't know whether that's love, or whether it's just you--the
+extraordinary effect of you! You belong to one of the hardest parts of
+my life, and at first, last night, I thought it was just seeing you
+again--like any other old friend. Now--this morning--I don't know." She
+stopped, distressed. The man was silent. "If I've really made you
+unhappy, it will kill me, I think," Martie began, again, pleadingly.
+"How can I go on into this marriage feeling that you are lonely and
+hurt about it?"
+
+They had sat down on the old iron bench that had for fifty years stood
+rooted in the earth far down at the end of the garden, under pepper
+trees and gnarled evergreens and rusty pampas grass.
+
+"I thought you would marry me," John said, "and that we would go to
+live in the farmhouse with the white rocks."
+
+His tone made her eyes fill again.
+
+"I'm sorry," she said.
+
+"Yes, but I can't leave it this way, Martie," John said. "If I DID come
+suddenly upon you, if I DID take you by surprise: why, I can give you
+time. You can have all the time you want! I'll stay here in the
+village--at the hotel, and see you every day, and we'll talk about it."
+
+"Talking wouldn't make you anything but a divorced man, John," she said.
+
+"But you can't blame me for that--Adele did that!"
+
+"Yes, I know, dear. But the fact is a fact, just the same."
+
+"But--" He began some protest eagerly; his voice died away.
+
+"See here, John." Martie locked her hands about the empty, battered pan
+that had held the chickens' breakfast. "I was a girl here, ten years
+ago, and I gave my parents plenty of trouble. Then I married, and I
+suffered--and paid--for that. Then I came home, shabby and sad and
+poor, and my father and sister took me in. Now comes this opportunity
+to make a good man happy, to give my boy a good home, to make my father
+and sisters proud and satisfied, to do, in a word, the dutiful, normal
+thing that I've been failing to do all these years! He loves me,
+and--I've known him since I was a child--I do truly love him. This is
+July--we are to be married in August."
+
+"You are NOT!" he said, through set jaws.
+
+"But I am. I've always been a trial and a burden to them, John--I could
+work my hands to the bone, more, I could write another 'Mary Beatrice'
+without giving them half the joy that this marriage will give!"
+
+"That's the kind they are!" he said, with a boyish attempt at a sneer.
+
+She laughed forgivingly, seeing the hurt beneath the unworthy effort,
+and laid her fingers over his.
+
+"That's the kind I am, too! This is my home, and this is my life, and
+God is good to me to make it so pleasant and so easy!"
+
+"Do you dare say, Martie, that if it were not for Adele you would not
+marry me?"
+
+Martie considered seriously.
+
+"No, I can't say that, John. But you might as well ask me what I would
+do if Cliff's wife were alive and yours dead!"
+
+"I see," he said hopelessly.
+
+For a few minutes there was silence in the old garden. John stared at
+the neglected path, where shade lay so heavily that even in summer
+emerald green moss filmed the jutting bricks. Martie anxiously watched
+him.
+
+"What do you want me to do?" he asked, presently, in a dead voice.
+
+"I ask you not to make my life hard again, just when I have made it
+smooth," she said eagerly. "I've been fighting all my life, John--now
+I've won! I'm not only doing something that pleases them, I'm doing the
+one thing that could please them most! And that means joy for me,
+too--it's ALL right, for every one, at last! Dear, if I could marry
+you, then that would be something else to think about, but I can't. It
+would never be a marriage at all, in my eyes--"
+
+"Oh, how I hate this petty talk of marriage, and duty, and all the rest
+of it!" he burst out bitterly. "Tied to a little village, and its
+ideals--YOU! Oh, Martie, why aren't you bigger than all this, why don't
+you snap your fingers at them all? Come away with me--come away with
+me, Sweetheart, let's get out of it--and away from them! You and I,
+Martie, what do we need of the world? Oh, I want you so--I want you so!
+We'll go to Connecticut, and live on the bank of our river, and we'll
+make boats for Teddy--"
+
+Teddy! If she had been wavering, even here in the old garden, which was
+still haunted for her with memories of little girl days, of Saturday
+mornings with dolls, houses and sugar pies, the child's name brought
+her suddenly to earth. Teddy--! That was her answer.
+
+She got to her feet, and began to walk steadily toward the house. He
+followed her.
+
+"I ask you--for my sake--to give up the thought of it," she said
+firmly. "I BEG you--! I want you to go away--to India, John, and forget
+me--forget it all!"
+
+He walked beside her for a moment in silence. When he spoke his voice
+was dead and level.
+
+"Of course if you ask me, the thing is done, my dear!"
+
+"Thank you, John," she said, with a sinking heart.
+
+"Not at all."
+
+When they reached the side doorway, he went quickly and quietly in.
+Dean Silver, sauntering around from the front garden, met her. He had
+his watch in his hand. The gray car was waiting in the drive.
+
+"If we have to make Glen Mary to-night, Mrs. Bannister," he began. "And
+I want your answer to my wife's invitation," he added, with a concerned
+and curious look at her agitated face.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Silver," she said unhappily, "I can't come and visit you--it's
+all been a mistake--I think I must have been crazy last night! I'm so
+sorry--but things can't be changed now, I want you to take him away--to
+sail up the Nile--if you really are going--"
+
+"My dear girl," the man said patiently, "he hasn't the faintest idea of
+sailing with me--I wish to the Lord he had!"
+
+"He said he would," she said lifelessly.
+
+"Dryden did?" Silver turned upon her suddenly.
+
+"Yes, he just said he would."
+
+"DRYDEN?"
+
+"Yes." Martie picked a dead marguerite from a bush, and crumbled it in
+her fingers.
+
+"When did he?"
+
+"Just now."
+
+Dean Silver looked keenly at her face and shook his head bewilderedly.
+
+"You are really going through with it, then?"
+
+"Oh, yes, I must!" she answered feverishly. And she added: "I want to!"
+
+"I see you want to!" the novelist said drily. And his voice had lost
+its brotherly, affectionate tone when he added: "Very well, then, if
+you two have settled it between you, I will not presume to interfere, I
+was going down to the city to-morrow to see about reservations; if
+Dryden means it--of course it alters the entire aspect of affairs to
+me!"
+
+"Oh, don't use that tone!" she said agitatedly, "I didn't ask him to
+come here--I never encouraged him--why, I never thought of him! Am I to
+blame?"
+
+"Look here," said Silver suddenly. "You can't fool me. You know you
+love him!"
+
+Martie did not answer. Her colour had faded, and she looked pale and
+tired. She dropped her eyes Pity suddenly filled his own.
+
+"I'm sorry!" the man said quickly; "I'm awfully sorry. I'll help you if
+I can. He may buck the last moment, but perhaps he won't. And you think
+it over. Think it all over. And if you send me a wire one minute before
+the boat sails--that'll be time enough! We'll come back. I'll keep you
+informed--and for God's sake, wire if you can!"
+
+"We'll leave it that way," Martie said gratefully.
+
+"I believe you'll wire," Silver said, with another searching look. She
+only shrugged her shoulders wearily in answer.
+
+They were silent for a few minutes, and then John came out of the house
+with his bag in his hand. Lydia followed him down the steps.
+
+Lydia was somewhat puzzled by the manner of the visitors, but relieved
+to see that they were not planning to strain the hospitality of the
+house for lunch. It was merely a question of thanks and good-byes now,
+and these she had come forth to receive with dignity.
+
+"Your suitcase is in?" John said to his friend. He put his own into the
+rumble, snaps were snapped and locks closed. He did not look at Martie.
+He lifted his cap, and took Lydia's hand. "Good-bye, Miss Monroe, and
+thank you. Good-bye, Martie. Everything all right, Dean?"
+
+He got into his seat. Lydia gave her hand in turn to the novelist.
+
+"You mustn't count on a visit from this girl here, at Glen Mary," Lydia
+said in pleasant warning. "She's going to be a pretty busy girl from
+now on, I expect!"
+
+"So she was saying," Dean Silver said gravely. "Our own plans may be
+changed," he added casually. "I may yet persuade Dryden here to sail up
+the Nile with me!"
+
+"I certainly think any one who has such a wonderful opportunity would
+be foolish to decline it," Lydia observed cheerfully.
+
+"Good-bye," said the writer to Martie. "You'll wire me if you can, I
+know!"
+
+"Good-bye," she said, hardly conscious of what was being done and said,
+in the fever of excitement that was consuming her. "And thank you!"
+
+He jumped into the car. Martie, trembling, stepped back beside Lydia as
+the engine began to throb.
+
+"Good-bye, John," she faltered. John lifted his cap; the driver waved a
+gloved hand.
+
+They were gone.
+
+"I'm so glad you told him about your engagement, Martie!" Lydia said
+approvingly. "It was the only honest thing to do. And dear me, isn't it
+quite a relief to think that they've had their visit, and it's over,
+and everything is explained and understood?"
+
+"Isn't it?" Martie echoed dully.
+
+She went upstairs. The harsh light of the summer noon did not penetrate
+the old Monroe house. Martie's room was full of greenish light; there
+was an opaque streak across the old mirror where she found her white,
+tired face.
+
+She flung herself across the bed. Her heart was still beating high, and
+her lips felt dry and hot. She could neither rest nor think, but she
+lay still for a long while.
+
+Chief among her confused emotions was relief. He had come, he had
+frightened and disturbed her. Now he was gone again. She would
+presently go down to mash Teddy's baked potato, and serve watery canned
+pears from the pressed glass bowl. She would dress in white, and go
+driving with Cliff and Teddy and Ruth in the late afternoon. Life would
+resume its normal placidity.
+
+A week from to-day Rose and Sally would give her the announcement
+party. Martie resolutely forced her thoughts to the hour of John's
+arrival: of what had she been thinking then? Of her wedding gown of
+blue taffeta, and the blue straw hat wreathed with roses. She must go
+down to the city, perhaps, for the hat--?
+
+But the city brought John again to her mind, and for a few delicious
+minutes she let herself remember his voice, his burning words, his
+deep, meaning look.
+
+"Well, it's wonderful--to have a man care that way!" she said, forcing
+herself to get up, and set about dressing. "It's something to have had,
+but it's over!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+Over, however, the episode was not, and after a few days Martie
+realized with a sort of shame that she did not wish it to be over. She
+could not keep her memory away from the enchanted hours when John's
+presence had lent a glory to the dark old house and the prosaic
+village. She said with a pang: "It was only yesterday--it was only
+two--only three--days ago, that he was here, that all the warmth and
+delight of it was mine!"
+
+The burning lightness and dryness seemed still to possess her: she was
+hardly conscious of the days she was living, for the poignancy and
+power of the remembered days. The blue taffeta dress had lost its
+charm, everything had grown strangely dull and poor.
+
+She passed the lumber-yard with a quickened heart; she climbed the hill
+alone, and leaned on the fence where they had leaned, and let the full,
+splendid recollection sweep across her. She knelt in church and prayed
+that there would be a letter from Dean Silver, saying that Adele was
+dead--
+
+A little cottage on a river bank in Connecticut became her Heaven. She
+gave it an old flag-stone walk, she sprinkled the green new grass of an
+Eastern spring with daisies. She dreamed of a simple room, where
+breezes and sunshine came by day, and the cool moon by night, and where
+she and John laughed over their bread and cheese.
+
+So far it was more joy than pain. But there swiftly came a time when
+pain alone remained. Life became almost intolerable.
+
+Clifford, coming duly to see her every evening, never dreamed of the
+thoughts that were darkening her blue eyes. He sat in the big chair
+opposite Malcolm's, and they talked about real estate, and about the
+various business ventures of the village. At nine o'clock Malcolm went
+stiffly upstairs, attended by Lydia, and then Martie took her father's
+seat, and Clifford hitched his chair nearer.
+
+He would ask her what she was sewing, and sometimes she laughed,
+spreading the ruffle of a petticoat over her knee, and refused to
+consider his questions. They talked of little things pertaining to
+their engagement: Martie was sure somebody suspected it, Clifford had
+been thinking of the Yellowstone for a wedding trip, and had brought
+folders to study. Rarely they touched upon politics, or upon the
+questions of the day.
+
+His opinions were already stiff-jointed, those of an elderly man. He
+did not believe in all this prohibition agitation, he believed that a
+gentleman always knew where to stop in the matter of wine. What right
+had a few temperance fanatics to vote that seven hundred acres of his,
+Clifford Frost's property, should be made valueless because they
+happened to be planted to grapes?
+
+He disapproved of this agitation concerning the social evil. There had
+always been women in that life, and there always would be. They were in
+it because they liked it. They didn't have to choose it. Why didn't
+they go into somebody's kitchen, and save money, and have good homes,
+if they wanted to? He told Martie a little story that he thought was
+funny of one of these women. It was the sort of story that a man might
+tell the widow who was to be his wife. It made Martie want to cry.
+
+She had always felt herself too ignorant to form an opinion of these
+things. But she found herself rapidly forming opinions now, and they
+were not Clifford's opinions.
+
+Three days after his departure, Dean Silver wrote her briefly. John was
+"taking it very quietly, but didn't seem to know just what had
+happened." He, Dean, hoped to get the younger man safely on board the
+vessel before this mood broke. He had therefore engaged passage on the
+Nippon Maru, for Thursday, four days ahead. They were all in San
+Francisco, Mrs. Silver and the little girl had come down with them, and
+John was interested in the steamer, and seemed perfectly docile. He
+never mentioned Martie.
+
+This letter threw her into an agony of indecision. There were a few
+moments when she planned to go down to the city herself, and see
+him--hear him again. Just a few minutes of John's eyes and his voice,
+of the intoxication of being so passionately loved--!
+
+She put aside this impulse, and went to write a telegram. But her hand
+trembled as she did so, and her soul sickened. What could she offer
+him, what but pain and fresh renunciation?
+
+She had made many mistakes in her life. But through them all a certain
+underlying principle had kept her safe. Could she fling that all aside
+now; that courage that had made her, a frightened girl of twenty, come
+with her unborn baby, away from the man whose marriage to her was in
+question, the faith that had helped her to kneel calm and brave beside
+the child who had gone?
+
+To do that would make it all wasted and wrong. To do that would be to
+lose the little she had brought from the hard years. She knew that she
+would not do it. She put it all away, when the constant thought of it
+arose, as weakness and madness.
+
+Thursday came, and Martie, walking toward Sally's house, where she and
+Teddy always had their Thursday supper, bought a paper, and read that
+the Nippon Maru had duly sailed.
+
+On the way she met Teddy himself--he had been to the store for Aunt
+Sally--with 'Lizabeth and Billy; he was happy, chattering and curveting
+about her madly in the warm twilight. He was happy here, and safe, she
+told herself. And the Nippon Maru had sailed--
+
+Sally was in her kitchen, her silky hair curled in damp rings on her
+forehead. She had on her best gown, a soft blue gingham, for Sally had
+just been elected to the club, and had been there this afternoon. She
+had turned up the skirt of her dress, and taken off the frilled white
+collar, laying it on a shelf until the dinner fuss and hurry should be
+over. Mary was sitting in the high-chair, clean and expectant, Jim was
+hammering nails in porch.
+
+The children put down their bread and butter, Sally kissed her sister.
+Martie began to butter swiftly, and spread it with honey.
+
+"San Francisco paper, Mart?"
+
+"Yes." Martie did not look up. "Mr. Dryden and Mr. Silver sailed this
+morning," she said.
+
+"Oh, really?" Sally turned a flushed face from the stove. "Lyd was
+talking about him to-day, and the way he acted, carrying you off for a
+walk, or something," Sally pursued cheerfully. "And until she happened
+to say that his wife is living, I declare I was frightened to death for
+fear he was in love with you, Mart!"
+
+Martie stared at her in simple bewilderment. Could it be possible that
+Sally had seen nothing of the fevers and heartaches of this memorable
+week? Her innocent allusion to the night of their walk--only a week
+ago!--brought Martie an actual pang.
+
+For just one other such evening, for just one more talk, Martie was
+beginning to feel she would go mad. They had said so little then, they
+had known so little what this new separation would mean!
+
+And Sally knew nothing of it. A sudden lonely blankness fell upon
+Martie's soul; it mattered nothing to Lydia and Rose and Sally that
+John Dryden loved her. It mattered more than life to her.
+
+What use to talk of it? How flat the words would seem for that memory
+of everything high and splendid. Yet she felt the need of speech. She
+must talk of him to some one, now when it was too late: when he was out
+on the ocean: when she was perhaps never to see him again.
+
+"Sis," she said, setting the filled plate in the centre of the table,
+"do you specially remember him?"
+
+Sally had chanced to come to the old home for just a minute on the
+morning of her talk with John in the garden. Sally nodded now alertly.
+
+"Certainly I do! He seemed a dear," she said cordially.
+
+"I wish they had not come!" Martie said sombrely.
+
+"You--wish--?" Sally's anxious eyes flashed to her face.
+
+"That they had never come!"
+
+"Oh, Mart! Oh, Mart, why?"
+
+"Because--because I think perhaps I should not marry Cliff, feeling as
+I do to John!" Martie said desperately.
+
+She had not quite meant it when she said it: her sick heart was merely
+trying to reach Sally's concern, it frightened her now to feel that it
+was almost true.
+
+"WHAT!" Sally whispered.
+
+She was roused now: too much roused. Martie began hastily to reassure
+Sally, and herself, too.
+
+"Oh, I will, Sally. Of course I will. And nobody will ever know this
+except you and me!"
+
+"Martie, dear, he DOES care then?"
+
+"Oh, yes, he cares!"
+
+"But, Mart--that's terrible!"
+
+Martie laughed ruefully.
+
+"It's miserable!" she agreed, her eyes watering even while she smiled.
+
+"He knew about Cliff?" Sally questioned.
+
+"Oh, yes!"
+
+"And his own wife is alive?"
+
+"Oh, yes!"
+
+"Well, then?" Sally concluded anxiously. "What does he want--what does
+he expect you to do?"
+
+To this Martie only answered unhappily:
+
+"I don't know."
+
+Sally, staring at her in distress, was silent. But as Martie suddenly
+seemed to put the subject aside, and called the children for supper,
+she turned back to the stove in relief. Presently they were all
+gathered about the kitchen table, Martie encouraging the children, as
+usual, to launch into the conversation, and laughing in quite her usual
+merry manner at their observations. She took Mary into her lap,
+ruffling the curly little head with her kisses, and whispering
+endearments into the small ear. But Sally noticed that she was not
+eating.
+
+Later, when they had put away the hot, clean dishes, and made the
+kitchen orderly for the night, Sally touched somewhat awkwardly upon
+the delicate topic.
+
+"Too bad--about Mr. Dryden," Sally ventured. Martie, at the open
+doorway, gave no sign of hearing. Her splendid bronze head was resting
+against the jamb, she was looking down the shabby little littered
+backyard to the river. And suddenly it seemed to Sally that restless,
+lovely Martie did not really belong to Monroe, that this mysterious
+sister of hers never had belonged to Monroe, that Martie's well-groomed
+hair and hands were as little in place here as Martie's curious
+aloofness from the town affairs, as Martie's blue eyes through which
+her hungry soul occasionally looked. "I'm awfully sorry for him," Sally
+went on, a little uncertainly. "But what can you do? He must realize--"
+
+"He realizes nothing!" Martie said, half-smiling, half-sighing.
+
+"He's not a Catholic, then?"
+
+"No. He's--nothing."
+
+"But you explained to him? And you told him about Cliff?"
+
+"Yes; he knew about Cliff." But Martie's tone was so heavy, and the
+fashion in which she raised a hand to brush the hair from her white
+forehead was so suggestive of pain, that Sally felt a little tremor of
+apprehension.
+
+"Martie--you don't--CARE, too?" she asked fearfully.
+
+"With every fibre of my soul and body!" Martie answered, in a low,
+moody voice from the doorway. "Sally--Sally--Sally--to be free!" she
+went on, speaking, as Sally was vaguely aware, more for the relief of
+her own heart than for any effect on her sister. "To have him free! We
+always liked each other--loved each other, I think. What a life--what
+joy we would have! Oh, I can't bear it. I can't bear to have the days
+go by, and the years go by, and never--never see him or hear him again!
+I can't help Cliff; I can't help John's wife; I can't help it if he
+seems odd and boyish and different to other people--! That's what makes
+him John--what he is!"
+
+"I never dreamed it," Sally marvelled.
+
+"I never dreamed it myself, a week ago. I always had a sort of special
+feeling toward John, and I knew he had toward me. But I've been a
+romantic sort of fool all my life--my Prince Charming had to come
+dashing up on a white horse--I didn't recognize him because he was a
+little clerk in a furniture store, and married to the stupidest woman
+the Lord ever made!"
+
+Sally laughed in spite of herself. Martie turned from the dimness of
+the doorway, and came into the hot, clean little room. She sat down at
+the table, and spread her arms across it, locking her white hands.
+
+"It's all so funny. Sally," she said childishly. "A week ago, I was
+sailing along, humbly grateful and happy because Cliff loved me. To-day
+John Dryden sails for a year in the Orient. And between those few days
+he drifts in here just long enough to bring my plans all tumbling about
+my ears."
+
+"I'm sorry!" Sally, busily setting bread, could say nothing more
+significant. But as Martie remained silent, brooding eyes on her own
+fingers, the older sister added timidly: "Do--do you think perhaps
+you'll get over that--that feeling?"
+
+"That is my only hope!" Martie said courageously.
+
+"And after all," Sally went on, eagerly, "what could he offer you?
+Cliff is--he's devoted to you, and he's steadiness itself! And I do
+believe you would be perfectly contented if you just put the other
+thing out of your mind, and tried to make the greatest happiness
+possible out of your new life! Lydia and Pa, and all of us, and Ruth
+and Teddy are all so happy about it And you know there's no safety like
+the safety of being married to a good man!"
+
+Martie laughed.
+
+"You're quite right, Sally! But," she added, her face growing serious
+again, "the terrible thing is this: If I marry Cliff, I do it--just a
+LITTLE--with other things in view. The children, as you say, and the
+good opinion of the town, and Pa's happiness, and Len's prosperity, and
+the pleasure of being mistress of the old house, and dear knows what!
+Of course I LIKE Cliff--but I tell you frankly that I'm looking even
+now to the time when our honeymoon shall be over, and the first
+strangeness of--well, of belonging to him is over!"
+
+Sally's face was flaming. She had stopped working, and both sisters
+faced each other consciously.
+
+"In other words," smiled Martie, "I wish I had been married to him ten
+years ago, and by this time had little Sally and Cliffy--"
+
+"Oh, dearest, I do hope there are children!" Sally said eagerly.
+
+"I hope so, too!" Martie said simply. And with suddenly misting eyes
+Sally heard her say softly, half to herself, "I want another girl!"
+Then her lip trembled, and to the older sister's consternation she
+began to cry, with her shining head laid on her arms. "I don't know
+w-w-what to do, Sally!" she sobbed. "I don't know what is right! I know
+I'm desperately tired of worrying and fretting and being criticised! I
+don't see why it should be my life that is always being upset and
+disorganized, while other women go on placidly having children and
+giving dinners!"
+
+"Perhaps because you are so different from other? women?" Sally
+suggested, somewhat timidly. She was not sure that Martie would like
+this.
+
+But Martie gave her a grateful glance, and immediately dried her eyes
+with a brisk evidence of returning self-control.
+
+"Well!" she said sensibly. "It is that way, anyhow, and I have to make
+the best of it. I married foolishly, in some ways, and I paid the
+price--nobody knows what it was! Then I came back here, and had really
+worked out a happy life for myself, when Cliff came along, and no
+sooner was I adjusted to Cliff--to the thought of marriage again, when
+John upset it all!"
+
+"The happiness of the woman who marries Cliff ought to be pretty safe,"
+offered Sally.
+
+"Yes, I know it. But Sally," Martie said, looking at her sister
+questioningly, "sometimes I feel that I don't dare risk it! I can't
+marry John, but I can't seem to--to let him go, either. I know what
+madness that visit was, and yet--and yet every minute that we were
+together was like--I don't know--like swimming in a sea of gold! I
+didn't know what I wore or ate in those days! Pa and Lyd--other people
+didn't seem to exist! I never believed before that any one could feel
+as strange--as bewildered and excited and happy--as I did then. It was
+like being hungry and satisfied at the same time. It was just like
+being under a spell! His voice, Sally, and the way he speaks of men and
+books--so surely, and yet in that boyish way--and his hands, and the
+way he smiles through his lashes--I can't forget one instant of it! We
+got breakfast together; I can't go into the kitchen now without
+remembering it, and longing to have him there again, whipping eggs and
+hunting about for the butter, while all the time we were laughing and
+talking so wonderfully! It's that--loving that way, that makes life
+worth while, Sally. Nothing else counts! Nothing that we did together
+seemed insignificant, and nothing that I do without him is worth
+while--I can't--can't--can't let him go!"
+
+Sally was frightened as her sister's head went down again. She could
+think of nothing to say. "I can't help thinking that our life would be
+that," Martie went on presently, raising her sombre face to rest it on
+one hand, her elbows propped on the table. "Everything would be
+wonderful, just because we love each other so! He writes, and I would
+write----"
+
+"Feeling as you do," Sally said after a troubled silence, "I would
+really say that you oughtn't to marry any one else, Mart. But even if
+Cliff gave you up, how could you marry a divorced man?"
+
+"Oh, Sally--don't keep reiterating that it's impossible!" Martie said
+with a flash of impatience. "I know it--I know it--but that doesn't
+make it any easier to bear! You women who have so much can't
+realize----"
+
+"You have Teddy," Sally suggested, in the silence.
+
+"Yes, I have Teddy--God bless him!" his mother said, with a sudden
+tender smile. And she seemed to see a line of little Teddies, playing
+with Grandma Curley's spools, glancing fearfully at the "Cold Lairs,"
+walking sturdily beside Margar's shabby coach, chattering to a quiet,
+black-clad mother on the overland train. She had her gallant, gay
+little Teddy still. "I don't know why I talk so recklessly, Sally," she
+said sensibly. "It's only that I am so worried--and troubled. I don't
+know what I ought to do! Suppose I tell Cliff frankly, and we break the
+engagement? Then John will come back, and there'll be all that to go
+over and over!"
+
+"But that's--just selfishness," said Sally, spreading a checked blue
+towel neatly over her pan of dough, and adding last touches to the now
+orderly kitchen.
+
+"Oh, men are all selfish!" Martie conceded. "Every one's selfish! Cliff
+quite placidly broke Lydia's heart years ago; Rose and Rodney between
+them nearly broke mine. But now Cliff wants something from me, and Rose
+realizes that she has something to gain, and it's roses, roses all the
+way."
+
+"Well, that's life, Mart," submitted the older sister.
+
+"If I had it all to do over again," Martie mused, "I wouldn't come back
+after Wallace's death. Teddy and I could have made our way comfortably
+in New York. By coming, I have more or less obliged myself to accept
+the Monroe point of view----"
+
+"Oh, but Mart, we've had such wonderful times together, and it means so
+much to me to have you like Joe and the children!" said Sally.
+
+"Yes," Martie's arm went about her sister, "that's been the one
+definite gain, Sally, to see you so happy and prosperous, and to
+realize that life is going so pleasantly for you. As the years go by,
+Joe'll gain steadily; he's that sort; and Dr. Hawkes's children won't
+have to envy any children in Monroe. But, oh, Sis--if I could get away!"
+
+The old cry, Sally thought, as she anxiously studied the beautiful,
+discontented face.
+
+Presently Clifford came, to take his future wife home, and Joe came
+back from the hospital in the Ford, and there was much friendly talk
+and laughter. But Sally watched her sister a little wistfully that
+evening; didn't Martie think this was all pleasant--all worth while?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+Rose's little daughter, pawn that she was in the game of Martie's
+fortunes, was pushed into play the following day. For Rose telephoned
+Martie at the Library, in the foggy early morning, that Doris was not
+well: there was a rather suspicious rash on the baby's chest, and if it
+really were measles, there must be no announcement luncheon to-day.
+
+Martie had been eagerly awaiting that luncheon, when a dozen of the
+prominent young matrons of Monroe should learn of her engagement. She
+put up the telephone thoughtfully. Another delay. Another respite, when
+she might still say to herself over and over: "I COULD end it now. It
+isn't too late yet!"
+
+In her hand to-day was a brief note brought to land by the tender of
+the Nippon Maru. Dean Silver and John had duly sailed, they were far
+out on the ocean now. That was settled. Now there was nothing to do but
+go on serenely with her interrupted plans.
+
+And yet the restless excitement caused by his coming was still about
+her, she could not make herself forget. Everything that his odd and
+vibrant personality had touched was changed to her. The wallflowers he
+had twisted unseeingly in his nervous fingers, the kitchen where their
+eager, ardent talk had gone on over the boiling of coffee and the
+mixing of muffins, the hill they had climbed in gray, warm moonlight,
+these things belonged to him now. Martie touched the books he had
+praised tenderly, hearing his words again.
+
+He had not written her: she knew why. She must be all or nothing to
+John now. He had not spoken of her to Dean, he was trying in his
+blundering boyish way to forget.
+
+The novelist's note was short, and written in a tone of disappointment
+and reproach. Martie read it, and winced as she crumpled it in her
+hand. Presently she straightened it out, and read it again. She
+flattened it on the desk before her, and studied it resolutely, with
+reddened cheeks, and with a little pang at her heart.
+
+Sally came in, full of happy plans. There was talk now of making Joe
+resident physician at the hospital, with a little house up there right
+near the big building. It would be so dignified, bubbled Sally, setting
+little Mary on the desk, where she and Aunt Mart could each tie a
+small, dragging shoe-lace.
+
+"Of course, this won't be for a year or two, Mart--but think of the
+fun! A pretty house with a big porch, to match the main building, I
+suppose--"
+
+"But you'll be a mile out of town, Sis!"
+
+"Oh, I know--but I can run the children in to school in the Ford, and
+you'll have your own car, and that's all I really care about! This is
+only a possibility, you know. What are you thinking about, Mart?"
+
+Martie laughed guiltily.
+
+"I don't know what I was thinking," she confessed. Sally flushed,
+studying her with bright eyes.
+
+"Have you heard--"
+
+"From John? No, but he sailed. I have a note from Mr. Silver here. He
+was anxious to get him away, and they left suddenly. The sailing list
+was in the paper, too, with a little notice of them both. It's better
+so, I'm glad it's settled. But I wish I was a little more sure of what
+the next step should be."
+
+"I don't believe Rose's Doris has the measles at all," Sally said
+thoughtfully, "and in that case, the luncheon will be in a day or two,
+and won't that be rather--rather a relief to you? Oh, and Mart," she
+broke off suddenly to say, "I have a letter for you here--Teddy and
+Billy called for the mail yesterday, and they left this with mine."
+
+Martie took the big envelope, smiling. The smile deepened as she read.
+After a minute she turned the letter about on the desk, so that Sally
+might read it too.
+
+"From the editor of the magazine that took my other article," Martie
+explained. "I sent them another, two weeks ago."
+
+Sally read:
+
+MY DEAR MRS. BANNISTER:
+
+Your second article has been read with much interest in this office,
+and we are glad to use it. Enclosed is a check for $100, which we hope
+will be satisfactory to you. Our readers have taken so continued an
+interest in your first article that we are glad to give them something
+more from your pen.
+
+If you are ever in New York, will you favor us with a call? It is
+possible that we might interest you with an offer of permanent work on
+our staff. We make a special feature, as perhaps you know, of articles
+of interest to growing girls, and when we find a writer whose work has
+this appeal, we feel that she belongs to us.
+
+In any case, let us hear from you soon again.
+
+"A hundred dollars!" Sally said proudly, handing the letter back. "You
+smart thing! That's a nice letter, isn't it? Don't you think it is? I
+do. Listen, Mart, don't say anything about Joe's plans, will you?
+That's all in the air. I've got to go now, it's eleven. And Mart, don't
+worry too much about anything. It will all seem perfectly natural and
+pleasant once it's DONE. Good-bye, dear, I wish I could have been some
+help to you about it all!"
+
+"You have been, Sally--I believe you've been the greatest help in the
+world!" Martie answered enigmatically, kissing Mary's soft little neck
+where the silky curls showed under the little scalloped bonnet.
+"Good-bye, dear--don't walk too fast in this sun!"
+
+When Sally had tripped away, Martie sat on at the Library desk, staring
+vaguely into space. Outside, the village hummed with the peaceful
+sounds of a mild autumn morning. A soft fog had earlier enveloped it;
+it was rising now; every hour showed more of the encircling brown
+hills; by noon the school children would rush into a sunshiny world.
+Shopping women pushed baby-carriages over the crossings; a new
+generation of boys and girls would swarm to Bonestell's in the late
+afternoon. Time was always moving, under it all; in a few weeks the
+Clifford Frosts would be home again; in a few months the High School
+would stand on the ground where little Sally and Martie Monroe had
+played dolls' house a few years ago.
+
+This was her last week at the Library; Daisy David was coming in to
+take her place. Already Miss Fanny suspected the truth, and her manner
+had changed toward Martie a little, already she was something of a
+personage in Monroe.
+
+Women and children and old men came out and in, their whispers sounding
+in the quiet, airy space. Len's wife came in, with the third daughter
+who should have been a son. Teddy and Billy came in; they wanted five
+cents for nails; they had run out of nails. Measles had closed the
+little boys' classes, and they were wild with the joy of unexpected
+holiday.
+
+Martie presently found herself telling Miss Fanny that she would like a
+few hours' freedom that afternoon: she had shopping to do. She ate her
+basket lunch as usual, then she walked out into the glaring afternoon
+light of Main Street. A summer wind was blowing, the warm air was full
+of grit and dust.
+
+The Bank first, then Clifford's office, then a long, silent hour
+praying, in the empty little church, where the noises of Main Street
+were softened, as was the very daylight that penetrated the cheap
+coloured windows. Then Martie went to Dr. Ben's, and last of all to
+Sally's house.
+
+She was to take Teddy home and Sally came with them to the gate. It was
+sunset and the wind had fallen. There was a sweet, sharp odour of dew
+on the dust.
+
+"Be good to my boy, Sally!"
+
+"Martie--as if he was mine!" Sally's eyes filled with tears at her
+sister's tone: she was to have Teddy during the honeymoon.
+
+Martie suddenly kissed her, an unusually tender kiss.
+
+"And love me, Sis!"
+
+"Martie," Sally said troubled, "I always DO!"
+
+"I know you do!"
+
+Martie laughed, with her own eyes suddenly wet, caught Teddy's little
+hand, and walked away. Sally watched the tall, splendid figure out of
+sight.
+
+At the supper-table she was unusually thoughtful. Her eyes travelled
+about the familiar room, the room where her high-chair had stood years
+ago, the room where the Monroes had eaten tons of uninteresting bread
+and butter, and had poured gallons of weak cream into strong tea, and
+had cut hundreds of pies to Ma's or Lydia's mild apologies for the
+crust or the colour. How often had the windows of this room been steamy
+with the breath of onions and mashed potatoes, how many; limp napkins
+and spotted tablecloths had had their day there! Martie remembered, as
+long as she remembered anything, the walnut chairs, with their scrolls
+and knobs, and the black marble fireplace, with an old engraving,
+"Franklin at the Court of France," hanging above it. Mould had crept in
+and had stained the picture, which was crumpled in deep folds now, yet
+it would always be a work of art to Pa and to Lydia.
+
+She looked at Lydia; gentle, faded, dowdy in her plum-coloured cloth
+dress, with imitation lace carefully sewed at neck and sleeves; at
+Lydia's flat cheeks and rather prim mouth. She was like her mother, but
+life had perforce broadened Ma, and it was narrowing Lydia. Lydia was
+young no longer, and Pa was old.
+
+He sat chewing his food uncomfortably, with much working of the muscles
+of his face; some teeth were missing now, and some replaced with
+unmanageable artificial ones. The thin, oily hair was iron-gray, and
+his moustache, which had stayed black so much longer, was iron-gray,
+too, and stained yellow from the tobacco of his cigars. His eyes were
+set in bags of wrinkles; it was a discontented face, even when Pa was
+amiable and pleased by chance. Martie knew its every expression as well
+as she knew the brown-and-white china, and the blue glass spoon holder,
+and the napkin-ring with "Souvenir of Santa Cruz" on it. She could not
+help wondering what they would make of the new house when they got into
+it, and how the clumsy, shabby old furniture would look.
+
+"Pa and Lyd," she said suddenly in a silence. Her tone was sufficiently
+odd to arrest their immediate attention. "Pa--Lyd--I went in to see
+Clifford this afternoon, and told him that I wanted to--to break our
+engagement!"
+
+An amazed silence followed. Teddy, chewing steadily on raisin cookies,
+turned his eyes smilingly to his mother. He didn't quite understand,
+but whatever she did was all right. Malcolm settled his glasses with
+one lean, dark hand, and stared at his daughter. Lydia gave a horrified
+gasp, and looked quickly from her father to her sister: a look that was
+intended to serve the purpose of a fuse.
+
+"How do you mean?" Malcolm asked painfully, at last.
+
+"Well!" said Lydia, whose one fear was that she would not be able to
+fully express herself upon this outrage.
+
+"I mean that I--I don't truly feel that I love him," Martie said,
+fitting her phraseology to her audience. "I respect him, of course, and
+I like him, but--but as the time came nearer, I COULDN'T feel--"
+
+Her voice dropped in an awful silence.
+
+"You certainly waited some time to make up your mind, Martie," said her
+father then, catching vaguely for a weapon and using it at random.
+
+"But, Martie, what's your REASON?" Lydia overflowed suddenly. "What
+earthly reason can you have--you can't just say that you don't want to,
+now--you can't just suddenly--I never heard of anything so--so
+inconsiderate! Why, what do you suppose everybody--"
+
+"This is some of your heady nonsense, Martie," said her father's heavy
+voice, drowning down Lydia's clatter. "This is just the sort of
+mischief I expected to follow a visit from men as entirely
+irresponsible as these New York friends of yours. I expected something
+of this sort. Just as you are about to behave like a sensible woman,
+they come along to upset you--"
+
+"Exactly!" Lydia added, quivering. "I never said a word to you, Pa,"
+she went on hurriedly, "but _I_ noticed it! I think it's perfectly
+amazing that you should; of COURSE it's that! Martie listened to him,
+and Martie walked with him, and several people noticed it, and spoke to
+me about it! It's none of my business, of course, and I'm not going to
+interfere, but all I can say is THIS, if Martie Monroe plays fast and
+loose with a man like Cliff Frost, it will hurt us in this village more
+than she has ANY idea! What are people going to think, that's all! I
+certainly hope you will use your authority to bring her to her
+senses--just a few days before the wedding, with everybody expecting--"
+
+"Perhaps you will tell me what Clifford thinks of this astonishing
+decision?" Malcolm asked, again interrupting Lydia's wild rush of words.
+
+"Cliff was very generous, Pa. He feels that it is only a passing
+feeling, and that I must have time to think things over if I want it,"
+Martie began.
+
+"Ha! I should think so!" Lydia interpolated scornfully.
+
+"At first he was inclined to laugh about it, and to think that it was
+nothing," Martie said almost timidly, glancing from one to the other,
+and keeping one hand over Teddy's hand.
+
+"What makes you feel that you HAVEN'T given the thing due
+consideration, Martie?" her father asked darkly, with the air of
+humouring a child's fantastic whims.
+
+"Yes! You've been engaged for months!" Lydia shot in.
+
+"Well, it's only lately, Pa," Martie confessed mildly.
+
+"Exactly! Since somebody came along to upset you!" said Lydia. "All I
+can say is, that I think it would break Ma's heart!" she added
+violently. "You give up a fine man like Cliff Frost, and now I suppose
+we'll have some of your divorced friends hanging about--"
+
+"Lyd, dear, don't be so bitter," Martie said gently, almost maternally.
+"Mr. Dryden has gone off for a long tour; he may not be back for years.
+What I plan to do now is go to New York. I told Cliff that--that I
+wanted to go."
+
+"May I ask how you intend to live there?" Malcolm asked, with
+magnificent and obvious restraint.
+
+"By writing, Pa."
+
+"You plan to take your child, and reenter--"
+
+"I think I would leave Teddy, Pa, for a while at least." They had all
+left the table now, and gone into the parlour, and Martie, sinking into
+a chair, rested her chin on her hand, and looked bravely yet a trifle
+uncomfortably at her interlocutors. Teddy had dashed out into the yard.
+
+"Now, I think we have heard about enough of this nonsense, Martie,"
+said her father, in a changed and hostile tone. Lydia gave a satisfied
+nod; Pa was taking a stand at last. "You didn't have to say that you
+would marry Clifford," he went on sternly. "You did so as a responsible
+woman, of your own accord! Now you propose to make him and your family
+ridiculous, just for a whim. I sent you money to come on here, after
+your husband's death, and all your life I have tried to be a good
+father to you. What is my reward? You run away and marry the first
+irresponsible scamp that asks you; you show no sign of repentance or
+feeling until you are in trouble; you come back, at my invitation, and
+are made as welcome here as if you had been the most dutiful daughter
+in the world, and then--THEN--you propose to bring fresh sorrow and
+disgrace upon the parent who lifted you out of your misery, and offered
+you a home, and forgot and forgave the past! I am not a rich man, but
+what I have has been freely yours, your child has been promised a home
+for my lifetime. What more can you ask? But no," said Malcolm, pacing
+the floor, "you turn against me; yours is the hand that strikes me down
+in my age! Now I tell you, Martie, that things have gone far enough. If
+you follow your own course in this affair, you do so at your own risk.
+The day you break your engagement, you are no longer my daughter. The
+day you let it be known that you are acting in this flighty and
+irresponsible way, that DAY your welcome here is withdrawn! I will not
+be made the laughing-stock of this town!"
+
+Lydia was in tears; Martie pale. But the younger woman did not speak.
+She had been watching her father with slightly dilated eyes and a
+rising breast, while he spoke.
+
+"Cliff generous?" Malcolm went on. "Of course he's generous! He
+probably doesn't know what to make of it; responsible people don't blow
+hot and cold like this! The idea of your going in to him with any such
+cock-and-bull story as this! You'll break your engagement, eh?--and go
+on to New York for a while, eh?--and then come smiling back, I suppose,
+and marry him when it suits your own sweet will? Well, now, I'll tell
+you something, young lady," he added, with a sort of confident menace,
+"you'll do nothing of the kind! You sit down now and write Clifford a
+note, and tell him you were a fool. And don't let me ever hear another
+word of this New York nonsense! Upon my word, I don't know how I ever
+came to have such children! Other people's children seem to have some
+sense, and act like reasonable human beings, but mine--however, you
+know what I feel now, Martie. Going into the Bank indeed, and telling
+the man you're going to marry that you are 'afraid' this and you
+'fancy' that! I'll not have it, I tell you!"
+
+"I told him that I knew I was acting badly," Martie said, "I said that
+I felt terribly about it. I even cried--I'm not proud of myself, Pa!
+And he asked me to think it over, and not to worry about postponing the
+wedding, and--I think he was tremendously surprised, but he didn't say
+one unkind word!"
+
+"Well, he should have, then," Malcolm said harshly. "And you are a
+fortunate woman if, when it suits your high-and-mightiness to come to
+your senses, he doesn't take his turn to jilt YOU! On my word, I never
+heard anything like it! What possesses you is more than I can
+understand. You deliberately bring unhappiness down on your family, and
+act as if you were proud of yourself! I don't pretend to be perfect,
+but all my life I have given my children generously--"
+
+"Pa," Martie said suddenly, "I wonder if you believe that!" She stood
+up now, facing him, her breath coming quickly. It seemed to Martie that
+she had been waiting all her life to say this: hoping for the
+opportunity, years ago, dreading the necessity now. "I wonder if you
+believe," she said, trembling a little, "that you--and half the other
+fathers and mothers in the world--are really in the right! I didn't ask
+to be born; Sally didn't ask to be born. We didn't choose our sex. We
+came and we grew up, and went to school, and we had clothing and food
+enough. But then--THEN!--when we must really begin to live, you
+suddenly failed us. Oh, you aren't different from other fathers, Pa.
+It's just that you don't understand! What help had we then in forming
+human relationships? When did you ever tell us why this young man was a
+possible husband, and that one was not? I wanted to work, I wanted to
+be a nurse, or a bookkeeper--you laughed at me! I had a bitter
+experience--an experience that you could have spared me, and Lydia
+before me, if you had cared!--and I had a girl's hell to bear; I had to
+go about among my friends ASHAMED! You didn't comfort me; you didn't
+tell me that if I learned a little French, and brushed up my hair, and
+bought white shoes, the NEXT young man wouldn't throw me over for a
+prettier and more accomplished woman! You were ashamed of me! Sally,
+just as ignorant as Teddy is this minute, dashed into marriage; she was
+afraid, as I was, of being a dependent old maid! She married a good
+man--but that wasn't your doing! I married a bad man, a man whose
+selfishness and cruelty ruined all my young days, crushed the youth
+right out of me, and he might be living yet, and Teddy and I tied to
+him yet but for a chance! I suffered dependence and hunger--yes, and
+death, too," said Martie, crying now, "just because you didn't give me
+a livelihood, just because you didn't make me, and Sally, and Lydia,
+too, useful citizens! You did Len; why didn't you give us the same
+chance you gave Len? Len had college; he not only was encouraged to
+choose a profession, but he was MADE to! Our profession was marriage,
+and we weren't even prepared for that! I didn't know anything when I
+married. I didn't know whether Wallace was fit to be a husband or a
+father! I didn't know how motherhood came--all those first months were
+full of misgivings and doubts! I knew I was giving him all I had, and
+that financially I was just where I had been--worse off than ever, in
+fact, for there were the children to think of! Why didn't I have some
+work to do, so that I could have stepped into it, when bitter need
+came, and my children and I were almost starving? What has Len cost
+you, five thousand dollars, ten thousand? What did that statue to
+Grandfather Monroe cost you? Sally and I have never cost you anything
+but what we ate and wore!"
+
+Malcolm had risen, too, and they were glaring at each other. The old
+man's putty-coloured face was pale, and his eyes glittered with fury.
+
+"You were always a headstrong, wicked girl!" he said now, in a toneless
+dry voice, hardly above a whisper. "And heartless and wicked you will
+be to the end, I suppose! How dare you criticise your father, and your
+sainted mother? You choose your own life; you throw in your fortune
+with a ne'er-do-well, and then you come and reproach me! Don't--don't
+touch me!" he added, in a sort of furious crow, and as Martie laid a
+placating hand on his arm: "Don't come near me!"
+
+"No, don't you dare come near him!" sobbed Lydia. "Poor, dear Pa,
+always so generous and so good to us! I should think you'd be afraid,
+Martie--I should think you'd actually be afraid to talk so wickedly!"
+
+She essayed an embrace of her father, but Malcolm shook her loose, and
+crossed the hall; they heard the study door slam. For a few minutes the
+sisters stared at each other, then Martie went to the side door, and
+called Teddy in as quiet a voice as she could command, and Lydia
+vanished kitchenward, with only one scared and reproachful look.
+
+But the evening was not over. After Teddy was in bed, Martie, staring
+at herself in the mirror, suddenly came to a new decision. She ran down
+to the study, and entered informally.
+
+"Pa!" She was on his knee, her arms about him. "I'm sorry I am such a
+problem--so little a comfort!--to you. Forgive me, Pa, for I always
+truly loved you--"
+
+"If you truly want my forgiveness," he said stiffly, trying to dislodge
+the clinging young arms, "you know how to deserve it--"
+
+The old phraseology, and the old odour of teeth and skin! Martie alone
+was changed.
+
+"But forgive me, Pa, and I'll truly try never to cross you again."
+Reluctantly, he conceded a response to her kiss, and she sat on the arm
+of his chair, and played with the thin locks of his hair while she
+completed the peace. Then she went into the kitchen, where Lydia was
+sitting at the table, soaking circles of paper in brandy for the
+preservation of the glasses of jelly ranged before her.
+
+"Lyd, I just went and told Pa that I was sorry that I am such a beast,
+and we've made it up--"
+
+"I don't think you ought to talk as if it was just a quarrel," Lydia
+said. "If Pa was angry with you, he had good cause--"
+
+"Darling, I know he did! But I couldn't bear to go to sleep with ill
+feeling between us, and so I came down, and apologized, and did the
+whole thing handsomely--"
+
+"You couldn't talk so lightly if you really CARED, Mart!"
+
+"I care tremendously, Lyd. Why don't you use paraffin?"
+
+"I know," Lydia said with interest, "Angela does. But somehow Ma always
+did it this way."
+
+"Well, I'll mark 'em for you!" Martie began to cut neat little labels
+from white paper, and to write on them, "Currant Jelly with Rasp.
+1915." Presently she and Lydia were chatting pleasantly.
+
+"I really put up too much one year," Lydia said, "and it began to
+spoil, so I sent a whole box of it out to the Poor House; I don't
+suppose they mind! But Mrs. Dolan there never sent my glasses back!
+However, this year I'll give you some, Mart; unless Polly put some up."
+
+"Unless I go to New York!" Martie suggested.
+
+Lydia's whole face darkened.
+
+"And if I do, you and Sally will be good to Teddy?" his mother asked,
+her tone suddenly faltering.
+
+"Martie, what POSSESSES you to talk about going to New York now?"
+
+"Oh, Lyddy, you'd never understand! It's just the longing to do
+something for myself, to hold my own there, to--well, to make good!
+Marrying here, and being comfortably supported here, seems like--like
+failure, almost, to me! If it wasn't for Teddy, I believe that I would
+have gone long ago!"
+
+"And a selfish feeling like that is strong enough to make you willing
+to break a good man's heart, and desert your child?" asked Lydia in
+calm tones.
+
+"It won't break his heart, Lyd--not nearly so much as he broke yours,
+years ago! And when I can--when I could, I would send for my boy! He'd
+be happier here--" Martie, rather timidly watching her sister's face,
+suddenly realized the futility of this and changed her tone. "But let's
+not talk about it any more to-night, Lydia, we're both too tired and
+excited!"
+
+"I don't understand you," Lydia said patiently and wearily, "I never
+did. I should think that SOMETIMES you'd wonder whether you're right,
+and everybody else in the world is wrong--or whether the rest of us
+know SOMETHING--"
+
+Martie generously let her have the prized last word, and went upstairs
+again.
+
+To her surprise she found Teddy awake. She sat down on the edge of the
+bed, and leaned over the small figure.
+
+"Teddy, my own boy! Haven't you been asleep?"
+
+"Moth'," he said, with a child's uncanny prescience of impending
+events, "if I were awfully, awfully bad--"
+
+"Yes, Ted?" she encouraged him, as he paused.
+
+"Would you ever leave me?" he asked anxiously.
+
+The question stabbed her to the heart. She could not speak.
+
+"I'm enough for you, aren't I?" he said eagerly. Still she did not
+speak. "Or do you need somebody else?" he asked urgently.
+
+A pang went through her heart. She tightened her arm about him.
+
+"Teddy! You are all I have, dear!"
+
+His small warm hand played with the ruffle of her blouse.
+
+"But--how about Uncle Cliff, and Uncle John, and all?" he asked. Martie
+was silent. "Are you going to marry them?" he added, with a child's
+hesitation to say what might be ridiculous.
+
+"No, Ted," she answered honestly.
+
+"Well, promise me," he said urgently, sitting up to tighten his arms
+about her throat, "promise me that you will never leave me! I will
+never leave you, if you will promise me that! PROMISE!"
+
+He was crying now, and Martie's own tears started thick and fast.
+
+"I might have to leave you--just for a while--" she began.
+
+"Not if you promised!" he said jealously.
+
+"Even if I went away from Aunt Sally and the children, Ted, and we had
+to live in a little flat again?" she stammered.
+
+"Even THEN!" he said, with a shaken attempt at a manly voice. "I
+remember the pears in the carts, and the box you dropped the train
+tickets into," he said encouragingly, "and I remember Margar's bottles
+that you used to let me wash! You'd take me into the parks, and down to
+the beach, wouldn't you, Moth'?"
+
+"Oh, Teddy, my little son! I'd try to make a life for you, dear!"
+
+"And WE'D be our family, just you and me!" he said uncertainly.
+
+"We'd be a family, all by ourselves," she promised him, laughing and
+crying. And she clung to him hungrily, kissing the smooth little
+forehead under the rich tumble of hair, her tears falling on his face.
+Ah, this was hers, this belonged to her alone, out of all the world.
+"I'm glad you told me how you felt about this, Teddy," she said. "It
+makes it all clearer to me. You and I, dear--that's the only real life
+for us. I owe you that. I promise you, we'll never be separated while
+Mother can help it."
+
+His wet little face was pressed against hers.
+
+"And you'll NEVER talk about it any more!" he said violently. "Because
+I cry about it sometimes, at night--"
+
+"Never again, my own son!" He lay back on his pillow with a breath of
+relief, but she kept her arms about him.
+
+"Because you don't know how a boy feels about his own mother!" he
+assured her. Kneeling there, Martie wondered how she had come to forget
+his rights, forget his point of view for so long! He would always seem
+a baby to her, but he was a person now, and he had his part in, and his
+influence upon, her life. Suppose she had left him to cry out this
+secret hunger of his uncomforted; suppose, while she thought him
+contentedly playing with Billy and 'Lizabeth, he had been judging and
+blaming his mother?
+
+While she knelt, thinking, he went to sleep. But Lydia wondered what
+was keeping Martie awake. The light in Martie's room was turned up, and
+fell in a yellow oblong across the gravel; Lydia dozed and awakened,
+but the light was always there.
+
+Morning broke softly in a fog which did not lift as the hours went by.
+Malcolm was at home until after lunch, to which meal Teddy and Martie
+came downstairs unusually well dressed, Martie observing that she had
+errands down town. Teddy kissed Grandpa good-bye as usual, and his
+mother kissed Grandpa, too, which was not quite usual, and clung with
+her white hands to his lapel.
+
+"Teddy and I have shopping to do down town, Pa, and I've written Cliff
+a note!" she said. Her father brightened.
+
+"I'm glad you're inclined to act sensibly, my dear!" he said,
+departing. "I thought we'd hear a different story this morning!"
+
+"What are you going down town for?" asked Lydia. "I ought to have some
+rubber rings from Mallon's."
+
+"I'm taking a lot of things down--I have to pass the cleaner's anyway,"
+answered Martie. "I'll get them, and send them."
+
+"Oh, bring them; they'll go in your pocket," Lydia said. "Well, Ted,
+what'll you do when these measles are over, and you have to go back to
+school? You've put an awful good suit on him, Mart, just to play in."
+
+"He'll change before he plays," Martie answered, nervously smiling.
+"Come, dear!"
+
+"Don't forget your things for the cleaner's!" Lydia said, handing her
+her suitcase. Martie surprised the older sister with a sudden kiss.
+
+"Thanks, Lyd, dear!" she said. "Good-bye! Come, Ted!"
+
+They went down through the quiet village, shabby after the burning of
+the summer. Fog lay in wet, dark patches on the yellow grass, and in
+the thinning air was the good smell of wood fires. Grapes were piled
+outside the fruit stores and pasted at a slant on Bonestell's window
+was a neatly printed paper slip, "Chop Suey Sundae, 15c." Up on the
+brown hills the fog was rising.
+
+They went to see Dr. Ben in his old offices opposite the Town Hall, and
+he gave Teddy a pink "sucker pill," as he had given Martie years ago.
+
+At the grocery they met Sally, with all four children, and two small
+children more, and Aunt Mart had her usual kisses. Sally was afraid
+that Grace's baby boy had the measles, she confided to her sister, and
+had taken the twins for a time.
+
+"Martie, how smart you look, and Ted all dressed up!" said Sally. "And
+look at my tramps in their old clothes! Mart, do go past Mason and
+White's and see the linen dress patterns in the window; there's a
+blue-and-tan there, and an all-white--they're too lovely!"
+
+"Why don't you let me send you one, Sally?" Martie asked
+affectionately. "I'm rich! I drew my two hundred and eleven dollars'
+bank account yesterday, and cashed a check from my editor, and Cousin
+Allie's wedding check!" Sally flamed into immediate protest.
+
+"Martie, I'll be wild if you do--you mustn't! I never would have spoken
+of it--"
+
+Martie laughed as she kissed her sister, and presently Sally wheeled
+Mary's carriage away. But Teddy and his mother went into Mason and
+White's, nevertheless, and both the tan-and-blue and the all-white
+dress were taken out of the window and duly paid for and sent away.
+Teddy shouted to his mother when they were in the street again that
+there was Uncle Joe in the car, and he could have taken the dresses to
+Aunt Sally.
+
+No, his mother told him, that was to be a surprise! But she crossed the
+street to talk in a low tone to Uncle Joe. Uncle Joe said more than
+once, "I'm with you--I think you're right!" and finally kissed Teddy,
+and suddenly kissed his mother, before he drove away.
+
+Teddy was bursting with the thought of the surprise. But this afternoon
+was full of surprises. They were strolling along, peacefully enough,
+when suddenly his mother took his small arm and guided him into the
+station where they had arrived in Monroe nearly two years before.
+
+A big train came thundering to a stop now as then, and Teddy's mother
+said to him quickly and urgently: "Climb in, Love. That's my boy! Get
+in, dear; mother'll explain to you later!"
+
+She took a ticket from her bag, and showed it to the coloured porter,
+and they went down the little passage past the dressing room, and came
+to the big velvet seats which he remembered perfectly. His mother was
+breathing nervously, and she was quite pale as she discussed the
+question of Teddy's berth with the man who had letters on his cap.
+
+She would not let Teddy look out of the windows until the train
+started, but it started in perhaps two minutes, and then she took off
+his hat and her own, and smoothed back his hair, and laughed
+delightfully like a little girl.
+
+"Where are we goin'?" asked Teddy, charmed and excited.
+
+"We're going to New York, Loveliness! We're going to make a new start!"
+she said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+From that hour Martie knew the joy of living. She emerged from the hard
+school in which she had been stumbling and blundering so long; she was
+a person, an individuality, she was alive and she loved life.
+
+Her heart fairly sang as she paid for Teddy's supper, the lovely brown
+hills of California slipping past the windows of the dining car. The
+waiter was solicitous; would the lady have just a salad? No, said the
+lady, she did not feel hungry. She and Teddy went out to breathe the
+glorious air of the mountains from the observation car, and to flash
+and clatter through the snow sheds.
+
+And what a delight it was to be young and free and to have this
+splendid child all for her own, thought Martie, her heart swelling with
+a wonderful peace. Everybody liked Teddy, and Teddy's touching
+happiness at being alone with his adored mother opened her eyes to the
+feeling that had been hidden under a child's inarticulateness all these
+months.
+
+The two hundred dollars between her and destitution might have been two
+million; she was rich. She could treat the troubled, pale little mother
+and the two children from the next section to lemonades every
+afternoon, and when they reached Chicago, hot and sunshiny at last, she
+and Teddy spent the day loitering through a big department store. Here
+Teddy was given a Boy Scout suit, and Martie bought herself a cake of
+perfumed soap whose odour, whenever she caught it in after times,
+brought back the enchanting emotion of these first days of independence.
+
+Tired, dirty, they were sitting together late in the afternoon of the
+fifth day, when she felt a sudden tug at her heart. Outside the car
+window, slipping steadily by, were smoke-stained brick factories, and
+little canals and backwaters soiled with oil and soot, and heaps of
+slag and scrap iron and clinkers. Then villages swept by--flat, orderly
+villages with fences enclosing summer gardens. Then factories
+again--villages--factories--no more of the flat, bare fields: the
+fields were all of the West.
+
+But suddenly above this monotonous scene Martie noticed a dull glow
+that grew rosier and steadier as the early evening deepened. Up against
+the first early stars the lights of New York climbed in a wide bar of
+pink and gold, flung a quivering bar of red.
+
+She was back again! Back in the great city. She belonged once more to
+the seething crowds in the Ghetto, to the cool arcades between the
+great office buildings, to Broadway with its pushing crowds of
+shoppers, to the Bronx teeming with tiny shops and swung with the signs
+of a thousand apartments to let. The hotels, with their uniformed
+starters, the middle Forties, with their theatrical boarding-houses,
+the tiny experimental art shops and tea shops and gift shops that
+continually appear and disappear among the basements of old brown-stone
+houses--she was back among them all!
+
+Tears of joy and excitement came to her eyes. She pressed her face
+eagerly beside the child's face at the window.
+
+"Look down, Ted, that's the East Side, dear, with all the children
+playing; do you remember? And see all the darling awnings flapping!"
+
+"I shouldn't wonder if we should have an electric storm!" said Teddy,
+finding the old phrase easily, his warm little cheek against hers.
+
+"We're back in New York, Teddy! We're home again!" She was gathering
+her things together. A thought smote her, and she paused with suddenly
+colouring cheeks. This might so easily have been her wedding-trip; she
+and Clifford might have been together now.
+
+Poor Clifford, with his stiffly moving brain and his platitudes! She
+hoped he would marry some more grateful woman some day. What a Paradise
+opening for Lydia if he could ever fancy her again! Martie spent a
+moment in wonder as to what the story given Monroe would be. She had
+mailed a letter to Lydia, and one to Clifford, during that last, quiet,
+foggy morning--letters written after the packing had been done on that
+last night. She had suggested that Monroe be given a hint that business
+had taken Mrs. Bannister suddenly eastward. It would be a nine days'
+wonder; in six months Monroe would only vaguely remember it. Gossips
+might suspect the truth: they would never know it. Clifford himself, in
+another year, would be placidly implying that there never had been
+anything in the rumour of an engagement. Rose would dimple and shake
+her head; Martie was always just a little ODD. Lydia would confide to
+Sally that she was just sick for fear that Dryden man--and Sally,
+sternly inspecting Jimmy's little back for signs of measles, would
+quote Joe. Joe ALWAYS thought Martie would make good, and Joe wasn't
+one bit sorry she had done as she had. Dr. Ben would defend her, too,
+for on that sudden impulsive call she had let her full heart thank him
+for all his fatherly goodness to her beloved Sally, and had told him
+what she was doing.
+
+"Mark ye, if you was engaged to me, ye wouldn't jump the traces like
+this!" the old man had assured her.
+
+"Dr. Ben, I wouldn't want to!" she had answered gaily. "You're older
+than Cliff; I know that. But you're broad, Dr. Ben, and you're simple,
+and you aren't narrow! You've grown older the way I want to, just
+smiling and listening. And you know more in your little finger
+than--than some people know in their whole bodies!" And she put her
+arms about his neck, and gave him a daughter's laughing kiss.
+
+"Looky here," said the old man, warming, "a man's got to be dead before
+he can stand for a thing like this! You haven't got a waiting-list, I
+suppose, Miss Martie?"
+
+"No, sir!" she answered positively. "But if ever I do I'll let you
+know!"
+
+She and Teddy ate their first meal at Childs'. Little signs bearing the
+single word "strawberries" were pasted on the window; Martie felt a
+real thrill of affection for the place as she went in. After a while
+"Old Southern Corn Cakes" would take the place of the strawberries, and
+then grape-fruit "In Season Now."
+
+"After a while we'll be too rich to come here, Ted!" she said as they
+went out.
+
+"Wull we?" Teddy asked regretfully. They went into the pushing and
+crowding of the streets; heard the shrill trill of the crossing
+policeman's whistle again; caught a glimpse of Broadway's lights,
+fanning lower and higher, and as the big signs rippled up and down.
+
+Martie drank it in eagerly, no faintest shadow of apprehension fell
+upon this evening. She and Teddy walked to their little hotel;
+to-morrow she would see her editor, and they would search for cheaper
+quarters. She would get the half-promised position or another; it
+mattered not which. She would board economically, or find diminutive
+quarters for housekeeping; be comfortable either way. If they kept
+house, some kindly old woman would be found to give Teddy bread and
+butter when he came in from school. And on hot summer Sundays she and
+Teddy would pack their lunch, and make an early start for the beach;
+theoretically, it would be an odd life for the child, but actually--how
+much richer and more sympathetic she would make it than her own had
+been! Children are natural gypsies, and Teddy would never complain
+because his mother kept him up later than was quite conventional in the
+evening, and sometimes took him to her office, to draw pictures or look
+at books for a quiet hour.
+
+And she would have friends: women who were working like herself, and
+men, too. She was as little afraid of the other as of the one now.
+There would be visits to country cottages; there would be winter
+dinners, down on the Square. And some day, perhaps, she would have the
+studio with the bare floors and the dark rugs. Over and over again she
+said the words to herself: she was free; she was free.
+
+Dependence on Pa's whim, on Wallace's whim, was over. She stood alone,
+now; she could make for herself that life that every man was always
+free to make; that every woman should be offered, too. She had suffered
+bitterly; she might live to be an old, old woman, but she knew that the
+sight of a fluffy-headed girl baby must always stab her with
+unendurable pain. She had been shabby, hungry, ashamed, penniless,
+humiliated. She had been ill, physically handicapped for weary weeks
+upon weeks.
+
+And she had emerged, armed for the fight. The world needed her now,
+Cliff and Pa needed her, even Dr. Ben and Sally and Len would have been
+proud to offer her a home. Miss Fanny was missing her now; a dozen
+persons idling into the Library in sleepy little Monroe's summer fog,
+to-morrow morning, would wish that Miss David was not so slow, would
+wish that Mrs. Bannister was back.
+
+The editor himself was out of town; but his assistant was as
+encouraging as a somewhat dazzled young man could be.
+
+"She's a corker," said the assistant later. "She's pretty and she talks
+fast and she's full of fun; but it's not that. She's got a sort of PUSH
+to her; you'll like her. I bet she'll be just the person. I told her
+that you'd be here this morning, and she said she'd call again."
+
+"I hope she does!" the editor said. Her card was handed him a moment
+later.
+
+In came the tall, severely gowned woman with the flashing smile and
+blue eyes, and magnificent bronze hair. She radiated confidence and
+power. He had hoped for something like this from her letters; she was
+better than his hopes. She wanted a position. She hoped, she said
+innocently, that it was a good time for positions.
+
+It was always a good time for certain people, the editor reflected.
+They talked for half an hour, irrelevant talk, Martie thought it, for
+it was principally of her personal history and his own. Then a
+stenographer interrupted; the little boy was afraid that his mother had
+gone away through some other door!
+
+The little boy came in, and shook hands with Mr. Trowbridge, and
+subsided into his mother's lap. Then the three had another half-hour's
+talk. Mr. Trowbridge had boys, too, but they were up in the country now.
+
+He himself escorted them over the office, through large spaces filled
+with desks, past closed doors, through a lunch-room and a library.
+Respectful greetings met them on all sides. Martie was glad she had on
+her wedding suit, and the new hat that had been in a department store
+on Sixth Avenue yesterday afternoon. Mr. Trowbridge called Mrs.
+Bannister's attention to a certain desk. When they went back to the
+privacy of his own office, he asked her if she would like to come to
+use that desk, say on Monday?
+
+"There's a bunch of confidential letters there now, for you to answer,"
+he said. "Then there are always articles to change, or cut, or adapt.
+Also our Miss Briggs, in the 'My Own Money Club,' needs help. We may
+ask you sometimes to take home a bunch of stories to read; we may ask
+you to do something else!"
+
+"I'll address envelopes or stoke the furnace!" said Martie, bright
+tears in her smiling eyes. "I don't know whether I'm worth all that
+money," she added, "for it doesn't seem to me that anybody in the world
+really EARNS as much as twenty dollars a week, but I'll try to be! I'm
+twenty-eight years old, and I've been waiting all my life for this
+chance!"
+
+"Well, even at that age, you may have a year or two of usefulness left,
+if your health is spared you." the editor said. They parted laughing,
+and Martie went out into the wonderful, sunny, hospitable city as gay
+as Teddy was. Oh, how she would work, how she would work! She would get
+down to the office first of all; she would wear the trimmest suits; she
+would never be cross, never be tired, never rebel at the most flagrant
+imposition! She would take the cold baths and wear the winter underwear
+that kept tonsilitis at bay; she would hire a typewriter, and keep on
+with her articles. If ever a woman in the world kept a position, then
+Martie would keep hers!
+
+And, of course, women did. There was that pretty, capable woman who
+came into Mr. Trowbridge's office, and was introduced as the assistant
+editor. Coolly dressed, dainty and calm, she had not suggested that the
+struggle was too hard. She had smilingly greeted Martie, offered a
+low-voiced suggestion, and vanished unruffled and at peace.
+
+"Why, that's what this world IS," Martie reflected. "Workers needing
+jobs, and jobs needing workers." And suddenly she hit upon the keynote
+to her new philosophy. "MEN don't worry and fidget about keeping their
+jobs, and _I_'M not going to. I'm just as necessary and just as capable
+as if I were--say, Len. If Len came on here for a job I wouldn't worry
+myself sick about his ever getting it!"
+
+What honeymoon would have been half so thrilling, she reflected, as
+this business of getting herself and Teddy suitably established? Her
+choice, not made until Sunday afternoon, fell upon a quiet
+boarding-house on West Sixty-first Street. It was kept by a kindly
+Irishwoman who had children younger and older than Teddy, and
+well-disposed toward Teddy, and it was only half a block from the Park.
+At first Mrs. Gilfogle said she would charge nothing at all for the
+child; a final price for the two was placed at fifteen dollars a week.
+Martie suspected that the young Gilfogles would accompany Teddy and
+herself on their jaunts occasionally, and would help him scatter his
+stone blocks all over her floor on winter nights. But the luncheon for
+which they stayed was exceptionally good, and she was delighted with
+her big back room.
+
+"I'm alone wid the two of thim to raise," said Mrs. Gilfogle. "I know
+what it is. He died on me just as I got three hundred dollars' worth of
+furniture in, God rest him. I didn't know would I ever pay for it at
+all, with Joe here at the breast, and Annie only walking. But I've had
+good luck these seven years! You'll not find elegance, but at that
+you'll never go hungry here. And you lost the child, too?--that was
+hard."
+
+"My girl would be three," Martie said wistfully. And suddenly reminded,
+she thought that she would take Teddy and go to see the old Doctor and
+Mrs. Converse.
+
+That they welcomed her almost with tears of joy, and that her improved
+appearance and spirits gave them genuine parental delight was only a
+part of her new experience. Mrs. Converse wanted her to settle down
+with Teddy in her old room. Martie would not do that; she must be near
+the subway, she said, but she promised them many a Sunday dinner-hour.
+
+"And that Mrs. Dryden got divorced, but she never married again,"
+marvelled the old lady mildly.
+
+"Oh, she didn't marry her doctor, then?"
+
+"No, I think somebody told Doctor that she couldn't. Wasn't she just
+the kind of woman who could spoil the lives of two good men? Somebody
+told Doctor that the doctor was reconciled to his wife, and they went
+away from New York, but I don't know."
+
+Martie wondered. She thought that she would look up the doctor's name
+in the telephone book, anyway, and perhaps chance an anonymous
+telephone call. Suppose she asked for Mrs. Cooper, and Adele answered?
+
+But before she did so, she met Adele. She had held her new position for
+six weeks then, and Indian Summer was giving way to the delicious
+coolness of the fall. Martie was in a department store, Teddy beside
+her, when a woman came smiling up to her, and laid a hand on her arm.
+She recognized a changed Adele. The beauty was not gone, but it seemed
+to have faded and shrunk upon itself; Adele's bright eyes were ringed
+with lead, the old coquetry of manner was almost shocking.
+
+"Martie," said Adele, "this is my sister, Mrs. Baker."
+
+Mrs. Baker, a big wholesome woman, who looked, Martie thought, as if
+she might have a delicate daughter, married young, and a husband
+prominent in the Eastern Star, and be herself a clever bridge player,
+and a most successful hostess and guest at women's hilarious
+lunch-eons, looked at the stranger truculently. She was a tightly
+corseted woman, with prominent teeth, and a good-natured smile. Martie
+felt sure that she always had good clothes, and wore white shoes in
+summer, and could be generous without any glimmering of a sense of
+justice. She was close to fifty.
+
+"How do, Mrs. Bannister," she said heartily. "I've heard Adele mention
+your name. How do you think she looks? I think she looks like death.
+How do, dear?" she added to Teddy. "Are you mama's boy? I don't live in
+New York like you do; I live in Browning, Indiana. Don't you think
+that's a funny place to live? But it's a real pretty place just the
+same."
+
+"Have you had your lunch?" Adele was asking. "We haven't. I was kept by
+the girl at the milliner's--"
+
+It was one o'clock on a Saturday afternoon. Martie was free to lunch
+where she pleased. She was free even to sit down with a woman whose
+name was under a cloud. They all crowded into an express elevator, and
+sat down at a table in the restaurant on the twelfth floor.
+
+Presently the unreality of it faded from Martie's uppermost
+consciousness and she began to enjoy herself. To sit with the wife of a
+Mystic Shriner, and the woman who had done what Adele had done, and
+whose husband incidentally was deeply devoted to herself, was not
+according to Monroe. But she was in New York!
+
+"I guess I was a silly girl, misled by a man of the world," Adele was
+saying in her old, complaining, complacent voice. "I know I was a fool,
+Martie, but don't men do that sort of thing all the time, and get over
+it? Why should us women pay all the time? You know as well as I do that
+John Dryden was just as queer as Dick's hatband; I was hungering, as a
+girl will, for pleasure and excitement--"
+
+"It was a dirty crime, the way that doctor acted," Mrs. Baker
+contributed, her tone much pleasanter than her words. "He must have
+been a skunk, if you ask me. Adele here was wrong, Mrs. Bannister; you
+and I won't quarrel about that. But Adele wasn't nothing but a child at
+heart--"
+
+"I believed anything he told me!" Adele drawled, playing with her knife
+and fork, her lashes dropped.
+
+"Dryden," the loyal sister continued majestically, "threw her over the
+second he got a chance; that's what she got for putting up with HIM for
+all those years! And then, if you please, this other feller discovers
+that he can't get rid of his wife. I came on then," she said warmly as
+Martie murmured her sympathy, "and I says to Adele, throw the whole
+crowd of them down. Billy Baker and I have plenty, and my
+daughter--Ruby, she's a lovely girl and she's married an elegant feller
+whose people own about all the lumber interests in our part of the
+country--she doesn't need anything from us. But if you ask me, it's
+just about killed Adele," she went on frankly, glancing at her sister,
+"she looks like a sick girl to me. We came on two or three days ago, to
+see a specialist about her, and I declare I'll be glad to get her back."
+
+"What has become of Dr. Cooper?" Martie felt justified in asking.
+
+"He lost all the practice he ever had, they say," Mrs. Baker said
+viciously. "And good enough for him, too! His wife won't even see him,
+and he lives at some boarding-house; and serve him right!"
+
+"And Jack's book such a success!" Adele said, widening her eyes at
+Martie. "Do you ever see him?"
+
+"He's got a great friend in Dean Silver, the novelist," Martie answered
+composedly. "I believe they're abroad."
+
+"The idea!" Adele said lifelessly. She was playing with her bracelets
+now, and looked about her in an aimless way.
+
+"Well, if this little girl has any sense she'll let the past be the
+past," remarked the optimistic Mrs. Baker. "There's a fellow out our
+way, Joe Chase; he's got a cattle ranch. You never heard of him? He's a
+di'mond in the rough, if you ask me, but he's been crazy about Adele
+ever since she first visited me. He'd give her anything in God's world."
+
+"But I think I'd die of loneliness winters!" Adele said, with the smile
+of a petted child.
+
+So there was a third man eager to sacrifice his life to her, Martie
+marvelled. Adele would consider herself a martyr if she succumbed to
+the wiles of the rough diamond; she would puzzle and distress him in
+his ranch-house; she would Fret and exact and complain. Probably one of
+the Swedish farmers thereabout could give him a daughter who would make
+him an infinitely better wife, and bear him children, and worship him
+blindly. But no; he must yearn for this neurotic, abnormal little
+creature, with her ugly history and her barren brain and body.
+
+"Isn't it funny how unlucky I am, Martie?" Adele asked at parting. "If
+you'll tell me why one woman has to have so much bad luck, and others
+just sail along on the top of the wave, I'll be obliged to you!" She
+came close to Martie, her faded, bitter little face flushing suddenly.
+"Now this Mrs. Cooper," she said in a low tone, "her father was a shoe
+manufacturer, and left her half a million dollars. Of course, it's a
+SNAP for her to say she'll do this, and say she'll do that! She says
+it's for the children she refuses the divorce, but the real reason is
+she wants him back. She can live in New York--"
+
+Adele's voice trailed off disconsolately. Martie felt a genuine pang of
+sympathy for the unhappy little creature whose one claim had been of
+sex, and who had made her claim so badly.
+
+"Write me now and then!" she said warmly.
+
+"Oh, I will!" Adele stretched up to kiss the taller woman, and Mrs.
+Baker kissed her, too. Martie went away smiling; over all its waste and
+suffering life was amusing, after all.
+
+Would John, with his irregular smile and his sea-blue eyes and his
+reedy voice, also come back into her life some day? She could not say.
+The threads of human intercourse were tangled enough to make living a
+blind business at best, and she had deliberately tangled the web that
+held them even more deeply than life had done. Before he himself was
+back from long wandering, before he learned that she was in the city,
+and that there had been no second marriage, months, perhaps years, must
+go by.
+
+Martie accepted the possibility serenely. She asked nothing better than
+work and companionship, youth and health, and Teddy. Every day was a
+separate adventure in happiness; she had never been happy before.
+
+And suppose this was only the beginning, she wondered. Suppose real
+achievement and real success lay ahead? Suppose she was one of the
+women to whom California would some day point with pride? Deep in her
+singing heart she suspected that it was true. How it was to come about
+she could only guess. By her pen, of course. By some short story
+suddenly inspired, or by one of her flashing articles on the women's
+problems of the day. She was not a Shakespeare, not a George Eliot, but
+she had something for which the world would pay.
+
+Nine years since the September when Rodney Parker had flashed into her
+world; a long nine years. Sitting under her green-shaded reading lamp,
+Martie reviewed them, for herself, and for Sally. She and Sally had
+thought of Dr. Ben as only an amiable theorist then, but there had been
+nothing theoretical about the help he had given Sally and Joe with
+their problem.
+
+Martie had solved her own alone. Rodney, Pa, Wallace, and John had all
+entered into it, but no one of them had helped her. It was in spite of
+them rather than because of them that she was sitting here poised,
+established, needed at last. She saw her life to-night as a long road,
+climbing steadily up from the fields and valleys, mounting, sometimes
+in storm, and sometimes in fog, but always mounting toward the
+mountains. Rose and Adele and Lydia were content with the lowlands, the
+quiet, sunny plains below. She must have the heights.
+
+There were other women seeking that rising road; perhaps she might help
+them. Love and wifehood and motherhood she had known, now she would
+know the joy of perfected expression, the fulfillment of the height.
+She dedicated herself solemnly, joyfully, to the claim of the years
+ahead. Ten years ago she might have said that at twenty-eight the best
+of a woman's life was over. Now she knew that she had only begun to
+live.
+
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Martie the Unconquered, by Kathleen Norris
+
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