T.S. Arthur - "Lessons in Life, For All Who Will Read Them"

Margaret Dixon McDougall - "The Letters of Norah on her Tour Through Ireland"

Jean de La Fontaine - "The Tales and Novels, v12: Monks of Catalonia & The Cradle"

Lillian Elizabeth Roy - "Polly of Pebbly Pit"

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




Presently the front room, so terribly occupied, was more terribly
empty. Little Margaret Bannister was laid beside little Mary and
Rose and Paul Converse at Mount Kisco. Children, many of them, died
thus every year, and life went on. Martie had the perfect memory,
and the memory of Adele's tears, of Mrs. Converse's tears, of John's
agony of sympathy.

Then they all went out of her life as suddenly as they had entered
it. Only the old doctor came steadily, because of Teddy's cold and
Wallace's cold. Martie worked over their trays, read fairy-tales to
Teddy, read the newspaper to Wallace, said that she felt well, she
HAD eaten a good lunch, she WAS sleeping well.

When the first suspicion of Wallace's condition came to her she was
standing in the kitchen, waiting for a kettle to boil, and staring
dully out into a world of frozen bareness. Margaret had been with
her a week ago; a week ago it had been her privilege to catch the
warm little form to her heart, to kiss the aureole of gold, to
listen to the shaken gurgle of baby laughter--

The doctor came out from Wallace's room; Martie, still wrapped in
her thoughts, listened to him absently. ... pneumonia. Suddenly she
came to herself with a shock, repeating the word. Pneumonia? What
was he saying? But, Doctor--but Doctor--is Mr. Bannister so ill?

He was very ill; gravely ill. The fact that taken in time, and
fought with every weapon, the disease had gained, augured badly.
Martie listened in stupefaction.

She suggested a nurse. The old doctor smiled at her affectionately.
Perhaps to-morrow, if he was no better, they might consider it.
Meanwhile, he was in excellent hands.

A strange, silent day followed. Martie looked at her husband now
with that augmented concern that such a warning brings. He slept,
waked, smiled at her, was not hungry. His big hand, when she touched
it, was hot. Teddy, coughing, and with oil-saturated flannel over
his chest, played with his blocks and listened to fairy-tales.
Outside, a bitter cold wind swept the empty streets. Her husband
ill, perhaps dying, Margar gone; it was all unreal and unconvincing.

At four o'clock the doctor came back, and at five the nurse
pleasantly took possession of the sick room. She was a sensible New
England woman, who cooked potatoes in an amazing way for Teddy's
supper, and taught Martie a new solitaire in the still watches of
the night. Martie was anxious to make her comfortable; she must lie
down; and she must be sure to get out into the fresh air to-morrow
afternoon.

But Miss Swann did not leave her case the next day, a Sunday, and
Martie, awed and silent, spent the day beside the bed. Wallace died
at five o'clock.

He wandered in a light fever that morning, and at two o'clock fell
into the stupor that was not to end in this world. But Martie had,
to treasure, the memory of the early morning when she slipped
quietly into the room that was orderly, dimly lighted, and odorous
of drugs now. He was awake then, his eyes found her, and he smiled
as she knelt beside him.

"Better?" she said softly.

The big head nodded almost imperceptibly. He moistened his lips.

"I'm all right," he said voicelessly. "Bad--bad cold!"

He shut his eyes, and with them shut, added in a whisper: "Sweet,
sweet woman, Martie! Remember that day--in Pittsville--when you had
on--your brother's--coat? Mabel--and old Jesse--!"

Heavenly tears rushed to her eyes; she felt the yielding of her
frozen heart. She caught his hand to her lips, bowing her face over
it.

"Ah, Wallace dear! We were happy then! We'll go back--back to that
time--and we'll start fresh!"

A long silence. Then he opened his eyes, found her, with a start, as
if he had not been quite sure what those opening eyes would see, and
smiled sleepily.

"I'll make it--up to you, Martie!" he said heavily She had her arms
about him as he sank into unnatural sleep. At eight, whispering in
the kitchen with John, who had come for Teddy, she said that Wallie
was better; and busy with coffee and toast for Miss Swann, she began
to plan for Costa Rica. Beaten, crushed, purified by fire, healed by
tears, she was ready for life again.

But that was not to be. Wallace was dead, and those who gathered
about Martie wondered that she wept for her husband more than for
her child.

Wept for the wasted life, perhaps, and for the needless suffering
and sorrow. But even in the first hours of her widowhood Martie's
heart knew a deep and passionate relief. Vague and menacing as was
the future, stretching before her, she knew that she would never
wish Wallace back.




BOOK III

CHAPTER I


There were times when Martie found it difficult to believe that she
had ever been away from Monroe at all; evenings, when she and Lydia
sat talking in the shabby sitting room of the old house; or mornings
when she fed the chickens in the soft fog under the willow trees of
the yard. Len and Sally were married and gone, dear Ma was gone, and
Belle had married, too; a tall gaunt woman called Pauline was in her
place.

But these things might all have transpired without touching Martie's
own life directly. She might still, in many ways, have been the
dreaming, ambitious, helpless girl of seven years ago. Sometimes the
realization of all she had endured came to her with an odd sense of
shock. She would glance down at her thin hand, in its black cuff,
and fall into deep musing, her face grave and weary. Or she would
call Teddy from his play, and hold his warm little body close,
staring at him with a look that always made the child uneasy. Third
Avenue, barred with sun and shade, in the early summer mornings;
Broadway on a snowy winter afternoon with the theatre crowd
streaming up and down, spring and babies taking possession of the
parks--were these all a dream?

No; she had gained something in the hard years; she saw that more
and more. Her very widowhood to Monroe had the stamp of absolute
respectability. Even Pa was changed toward her; or was it that she
was changed toward him? However caused, in their relationship there
was a fundamental change.

Pa had been a figure of power and tyranny seven years ago. Now he
seemed to Martie only an unreasonable, unattractive old man,
thwarted in his old age in everything his heart desired. Lydia was
still tremblingly filial in her attitude toward Pa, but Martie at
once assumed the maternal. She scolded him, listened to him, and
dictated to him, and he liked it. Martie had never loved him as
Lydia did; she had defied and disobeyed and deserted him, yet he
transferred his allegiance to her now, and clung to her helplessly.

He liked to have her walk down to his office beside him in the
mornings, in her plain black. While they walked he pointed out
various pieces of property, and told her how cheaply they had been
sold forty years ago. The whole post-office block had gone for seven
hundred dollars, the hotel site had been Mason's cow-yard! Old man
Sark had lived there, and had refused to put black on his house when
Lincoln was assassinated.

"And didn't he go to jail for that, Pa?"

"Yes, ma'am, he did!"

"But YOU--"

"I was in jail, too." Malcolm Monroe would chuckle under his now
gray moustache that was yellowed with tobacco stains. "Yes, sir, I
rounded up some of the boys, the Twentyonesters, we called
ourselves, and we led a riot 'round this town! The ringleaders were
arrested, but that was merely a form--merely a form!"

"You must have been a terror, Pa."

"Well--well, I had a good deal of your grandmother's spirit! And I
suppose they rather looked to me to set the pace--"

Smiling, they would go along in the sunlight, past the little homes
where babies had been turned out into grassy yards, past the
straggling stables and the smithy, and the fire-house, and the
office of the weekly Zeus. There was more than one garage in Monroe
now and the squared noses of Ford cars were at home everywhere.
Mallon's Hardware Emporium, the Five-and-Ten-Cent Store, still with
its pillars of twisted handkerchiefs, Mason and White's--how
familiar they were! And the old Bank, with its wide windows and
double roller shades was familiar, too. Martie learned that the Bank
had duly worn black a year or two ago for kindly old Colonel Frost;
his name had been obliterated from the big window, and Clifford
Frost was vice-president now.

"One death is two deaths, they say," Lydia had sighed, telling
Martie of the Colonel's death. "You know Cliff's wife died only two
months before his father did. That was a terrible thing! Her little
girl was seven years old, and she was going to have another--"

When Martie, in the early afternoon of a warm sweet day on mid-
February, had stepped from the train, with Teddy's little fingers
held tight in hers, Sally's face, running over with tears and
smiles, had been the first she found. Curiously changed, yet
wonderfully familiar, the sisters had clung together, hardly knowing
how to begin their friendship again after six long years. There were
big things to say, but they said the little things. They talked
about the trip and the warm weather that had brought the buttercups
so soon, and the case that had kept Pa on jury duty in Pittsville.

Len--rather pompous, and with a moustache!--explained why his wife
could not be there: the two-year-old daughter was not very well.
Martie questioned him eagerly of his two children. Both girls, Len
said gloomily; he asked his sister if she realized that there was
not a Monroe yet.

Lydia wept a few tears; "Martie, dear, to see you in black!" and
Martie's eyes watered, and her lip shook.

"Grace and all the others would have come," Sally said quickly, "but
we knew you'd be tired, and then it's homecoming, Martie, and you'll
have lots of time to see us all!"

She introduced Elizabeth, a lovely, fly-away child with bright loose
hair, and Billy, a freckled, ordinary-looking boy, who gave his aunt
a beautiful smile from large, dark eyes. The others were left with
"Mother"--Joe's mother.

"But, Sally, you're so fat!"

"And, Mart, you're so thin!"

"Never mind; it's becoming to you, Sally. You look still like a
little girl. Really, you do! And how's Joe?"

"Oh, Joe's lovely. I went down and spent a week with him. I had the
choice of that or a spring suit, and I took that!"

"Went--but where is he? I suppose he hasn't been sent to San
Quentin?"

"Oh, Martie, don't! You know Russell Harrison, 'Dutch's' cousin,
that used to play with Len, really WAS sent there!"

"For Heaven's sake, what for?"

"Well, Hugh Wilson had some trouble with Paul King, and--it was
about money--and Russell Harrison went to Hughie and told him--"

So the conversation was diverted over and over again; and the
inessential things were said, and the important ones forgotten. Len
had borrowed the firm's motor car, and they all got in. Martie, used
to Wallace's careless magnificence, was accustomed enough to this
mode of travel, but she saw that it was a cause of great excitement
to the children, and even to Sally.

"You say the 'firm,' Len--I'll never get used to my little brother
with a moustache! What do you mean by the 'firm?'" asked Martie. "My
goodness--goodness--goodness, there's the Library and Lacey's!" she
added, her eyes eagerly roving the streets.

"Miss Fanny is still there; she always speaks so affectionately of
you, Martie," said Lydia eagerly and tremulously. Martie perceived
that in some mysterious way Lydia was ill at ease. Lydia did not
quite know how to deal with a younger sister who was yet a widow,
and had lived in New York.

"There was an awful lot of talk about getting her out of the
Library," contributed Sally; "they said the Streets were at the back
of it; they wanted to put a man in! There was the greatest
excitement; we all went down to the Town Hall and listened to the
speeches--it was terrific! I guess the Streets and their crowd felt
pretty small, because they got--what was it, Len?"

"Seventeen votes out of one hundred and eleven!" Len said, not
moving his eyes from the road before him.

"My house is right down there, next door to Uncle Ben's," said
Sally, craning her neck suddenly. "You can't see it, but no matter;
there's lots of time! Here's the Hawkes's place; remember that?"

"I remember everything," Martie said, smiling. "We're nearly home!"

The old Monroe house looked shabby, even in the spring green. Martie
had seen the deeper, fresher green of the East for six successive
springs. The eucalyptus trees wore their tassels, the willows' fresh
foliage had sprung over the old rusty leaves. A raw gateway had been
cut, out by the old barn, into Clipper Lane, and a driveway filled
in. Tired, confused, train-sick, Martie got down into the old yard,
and the old atmosphere enveloped her like a garment. The fuchsia
bushes, the marguerites so green on top, so brown and dry under
their crown of fresh life, the heliotrope sprawling against the
peeling boards under the dining-room windows, and tacked in place
with strips of kid glove--how well she knew them!

They went in the side door, and through the dark dining room,
odorous of vegetable soup and bread and butter. An unearthly quiet
held the house. Pa's door was closed; Martie imagined the room
darker and more grim than ever.

Lydia had given her her old room; the room in which she and Sally
had grown to womanhood. It was as clean and bare as a hotel room.
Lydia and Sally had discussed the advisability of a bowl of flowers,
but had decided flowers might remind poor Mart of funerals. Martie
remembered the counterpane on the bed and the limp madras curtains
at the windows. She put her gloves in a bureau drawer lined with
folded newspaper, and hung her wraps in the square closet that was,
for some unimaginable reason, a step higher than the room.

Lydia sat on the bed, and Sally on a chair, while Martie slowly
moved about her new domain. The children had gone into the yard,
'Lizabeth and Billy charged not to let their little cousin get his
clothes dirty; when the trunks came, with his overalls, he could get
as dirty as he pleased.

The soiled, tumbled contents of the hand bag, after the five days'
trip, filled Martie with a sort of weary concern. She stood,
puzzling vaguely over the damp washcloth that was wrapped about a
cake of soap, the magazines of which she had grown so tired, the
rumpled night-wear.

"I suppose I should hang these up; we may not get the trunks to-
night."

"Oh, you will!" Lydia reassured her. A certain blankness fell on
them all. It was the glaring spring hour of four o'clock; not lunch
time, nor dinner time, nor bed time, nor time to go to market.
Suddenly a tear fell on Martie's hand; she sniffed.

"Ah, don't, Mart!" Lydia said, fumbling for her own handkerchief.
"We know--we know how hard it is! Your husband, and Ma not here to
welcome you--"

The sisters cried together.

But she slept well in the old walnut bed, and enjoyed a delicious,
unfamiliar leisure the next morning, when Teddy was turned out to
the safety of the yard, and Pa, after paternally reassuring her as
to her welcome and pompously reiterating that her old father's home
was hers for the rest of her life, was gone. She and Lydia talked
deeply over the breakfast table, while Pauline rattled dishes in the
kitchen and a soft fog pressed against the windows.

Martie had said that she was going over to Sally's immediately after
breakfast, but, in the old way, time drifted by. She went upstairs
to make her bed, and she and Lydia talked again, from doorway to
doorway. When they were finally dressed to walk down town, Lydia
said that she might as well go to market first; they could stop at
Sally's afterward.

Teddy galloped and curveted about them; Monroe enchanted Teddy. The
sunshine was just pushing back the fog, and the low hills all about
the town were coming into view, when Martie took her son in to meet
Miss Fanny.

Grayer and thinner, the librarian was otherwise unchanged. The old
strong, coarse voice, the old plain dress, serviceable and
comfortable, the old delighted affection. Miss Fanny wore glasses
now; she beamed upon Teddy as she put them on, after frankly wiping
her eyes.

She made a little fuss about Martie's joining the Library, so that
Teddy could take home "Davy and the Goblin."

They went out into the warming, drying Main Street again; everywhere
Martie was welcomed. In the shops and on the street humble old
friends eyed her black respectfully.

The nervousness that she had felt about coming back began to melt
like the mist itself. She had dreaded Monroe's old standards,
dreaded Rose and Len, and the effect her poverty must have on them.
Now she began to see that Rose mattered as little here as she had
mattered when Martie was struggling in East Twenty-sixth Street.
Rose "went" with the Frosts and the Streets and the Pattersons now.
Her intimate friend was Dr. Ellis's wife, a girl from San Francisco.

"Shall we go in for a minute, and make a little visit?" said Lydia,
as she had said years ago, whenever they passed the church. Martie
nodded. They creaked into the barnlike shabbiness of the edifice;
the little red light twinkled silently before the altar. Clara
Baxter was tiptoeing to and fro with vases. Teddy twisted and
turned, had to be bumped to his knees, was warned in a whisper that
he must not talk.

Father Martin was not well; he had an assistant, Lydia said. The
bishop wanted to establish a convent here, and old Mrs. Hanson had
left eleven hundred dollars for it. Gertie Hanson lived in
Fruitvale; she was married to a widower. She had threatened to fight
the will, but people said that she got quite a lot of money; the
Hansons were richer than any one thought. Anyway, she had not put up
a gravestone to her mother yet, and Alice Clark said that Gertie had
said that she couldn't afford it.

"Why, that house must have been worth something!" Martie commented,
picking up the threads with interest.

"Well, wouldn't you think so!" Lydia said eagerly.

The morning had been so wasted that Sally was in a whirl of dinner-
getting when they reached her house. She had her hearty meal at noon
on the children's account; her little kitchen was filled with smoke
and noise. To-day she had masses of rather dark, mushy boiled rice,
stewed neck of lamb, apples, and hot biscuits. Martie, fresh from
New York's campaign of dietetic education, reflected that it was
rather unusual fare for small children, but Sally's quartette was
healthy-looking enough, and full of life and excitement. 'Lizabeth
set the table; there was great running about, and dragging of
chairs.

Martie studied her sister with amused admiration. There was small
room for maternal vapours in Sally's busy life. Her matter-of-fact
voice ruled the confusion.

"Jim, you do as 'Lizabeth tells you, or you'll get another whipping,
sir! Pour that milk into the pitcher, Brother. Put on both sugar
bowls, darling; Brother likes the brown. Martie, dearest, I am
ashamed of this muss, but in two minutes I'll have them all started-
-there's baby--'Lizabeth, there's baby; you'll have to go up--"

"I'll go up!" Lydia and Martie said together. Martie went through
the bare little hallways upstairs, and peeped into shabby bedrooms
full of small beds and dangling nightgowns and broken toys.

Mary was sitting up in her crib, tumbled, red-cheeked, tears hanging
on her lashes. The room was darkened for her nap; she wore a worn
little discoloured wrapper; she clung to her rag doll. Martie, with
deathly weakness sweeping over her, smiled, and spoke to her. The
baby eyed her curiously, but she was not afraid. Martie picked her
up, and stood there holding her, while the knife turned and twisted
in her heart.

After a while she wrapped a blanket about Mary, and carried her
downstairs. Sally saw that Martie's face was ashen, and she knew
why. Lydia saw nothing. Lydia would have said that Martie had placed
poor Wallace's picture on her bureau that morning, and had talked
about him, calmly and dry-eyed; so why should she feel so much more
for her baby? Teddy had been a little strange, if eagerly friendly,
with his other cousins; but he knew how to treat Mary. He picked up
the things she threw down from her high-chair, and tickled her, and
made her laugh.

"If this elaborate and formal meal is dinner, Sally dear, what is
supper?"

"Oh, Martie, it's so delicious to hear you again! Why, supper will
be apple sauce and bread and butter and milk, and gingerbread and
cookies. It's the same the year round! I like it, really; after we
go up to Pa's to supper the children don't sleep well, and neither
do I."

"You haven't told me yet where Joe is."

"Oh, I know, and I WILL! We get talking, and somehow there's so much
to say. Why, Joe's finishing his course at Cooper's College in San
Francisco; he'll graduate this May. Dr. J. F. Hawkes; isn't that
fun!"

"A regular doctor!" Martie exclaimed. "But--but is he going to BE
one?"

"BE one! I should think he is!" Sally announced proudly. "Uncle Ben
says he's a born doctor--"

"And how long has it been UNCLE Ben?"

"Oh, 'Lizabeth adopted him. He adores the children."

"He loaned Joe the money," Lydia said with her old air of delicately
emphasizing an unsavoury truth.

Sally gave her younger sister a rather odd look at this, but she did
not deny the statement.

"And who keeps the quartette going?" asked Martie, glancing about.

"Joe's people; and Pa does send barrels of apples and things,
doesn't he, Sally?" Lydia supplied.

"Oh, yes; we only pay twelve dollars rent, and we live very
cheaply!" Sally said cheerfully, with another mysterious look.

A day or two later, when they were alone, she told Martie the whole
truth.

"It's Uncle Ben, of course, Mart; you remember his old offer, if
ever I had any children? He pays me twelve hundred a year for my
four. Nobody knows it, not even Lyd. People would only talk, you
know, and it's none of their affair. It's his fad, you know. We
married young, and Joe had no profession. Uncle Ben thinks the State
ought to pay women for bearing children. He says it's their business
in life. Women are taking jobs, foregoing marriage, and the nation
is being robbed of citizens. He believes that the hardest kind of
work is the raising of children, and the women who do it for the
State ought to be paid by the State. He does it for me, and I feel
as if he was a relation. It's meant everything to Joe and me, and
the children, too. Sometimes, when I stop to think of it, it is a
little queer, but--when you think of the way people DO spend money,
for orchids or old books or rugs--it's natural after all! He simply
invests in citizens, that's what he says. I would have had them
anyway, but I suppose, indeed I know, Mart, that there are lots of
women who wouldn't!"

"And is he financing Joe, too?"

"Oh, no, indeed! Uncle Ben never speaks of money to me; I don't ever
get one cent except my regular allowance. Why, when Joe was ill, and
one of the babies--Billy, it was--was coming, he came in to see me
now and then, but he never said boo about helping! Joe is working
his way; he's chauffeur for Dr. Houston; that's something else
nobody knows."

"I think that's magnificent of Joe!" Martie said, her face glowing.

"He graduates this year," Sally said proudly, "and then I think he
will start here. For a long time we thought we'd have to move away
then, because every one remembers little Joe Hawkes delivering
papers, and working in the express office. But now that the
hospital, up toward the Archer place, is really going to be built,
Uncle Ben says that Joe can get a position there. It's Dr. Knowles's
hospital, and Uncle Ben is his best friend. Of course that's big
luck for Joe."

"Not so much luck," Martie said generously, "as that Joe has worked
awfully hard, and done well."

"Oh, you don't know how hard, Mart! And loving us all as he does,
too, and being away from us!" Sally agreed fervently. "But if he
really gets that position, with my hundred, we'll be rich! We'll
have to keep a Ford, Mart; won't that be fun?"

"Dr. Ben might die, Sally," Martie suggested.

"That wouldn't make any difference," the older sister said
composedly. "I have the actual deeds--the titles, whatever they are-
-to the property MY money comes from. He gave me them a year ago,
when he was sixty. I certainly dread the talk there'll be when his
will comes to light, but Joe will be here then, and Joe isn't afraid
of any one."

"He's done for you what Pa should have done," Martie mused.

"Oh, well, Pa did his best for us, Mart." Sally said dutifully; "he
gave us a good home--"

"WAS it a good home?" Martie questioned mildly.

"It was a much finer home than MY children have, Mart."

"As far as walls and tables and silver spoons, I suppose it was.
But, Sally, there's no child alive who has a sweeter atmosphere than
this--always with mother, always learning, and always considered!
Why, my boy is blooming already in it!"

Sally's face flushed with pleasure.

"Martie, you make me so proud!"

"If you can only keep it up, Sally. With me it doesn't matter so
much, because I've only the one, and no husband whose claims might
interfere. But when 'Lizabeth and Mary, as well as the boys, are
older--"