Books: Martie The Unconquered

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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.

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