Kate Langley Bosher - "Miss Gibbie Gault"

Oscar Wilde - "A House of Pomegranates"

Ralph Henry Barbour - "The New Boy at Hilltop"

E. P. Roe - "A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: Martie The Unconquered

K >> Kathleen Norris >> Martie The Unconquered




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.