Books: Martie The Unconquered
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Kathleen Norris >> Martie The Unconquered
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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
cafnations 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?'"
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