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Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

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 drather 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.

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