Books: Martie The Unconquered
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Kathleen Norris >> Martie The Unconquered
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Sally, and Martie breathless, entered an enormous bedroom, shabbily
and scantily furnished. The outline of a large walnut bedstead was
visible in the gloom, and the dark curtains that screened two bay
windows. Across the room by a wide, dark bureau, a single gas jet on
a jointed brass arm had been drawn out close to the mirror, and by
its light a slender woman of twenty-seven or eight was straightening
her hair. Not combing or brushing it, for the Monroe girls always
combed their hair and coiled it when they got up in the morning, and
took it down when they went to bed at night. Between times they only
"straightened" it.
As the younger girls came in, and flung their hats on the bed, their
sister turned on them reproachfully.
"Martie, mama's furious!" she said. "And I do think it's perfectly
terrible, you and Sally running round town at all hours like this.
It's after six o'clock!"
"I can't help it if it is!" Martie said cheerfully. "Pa home?"
She asked the all-important question with more trepidation than she
showed. Both she and Sally hung anxiously on the reply.
"No; Pa was to come on the four-eleven, and either he missed it, or
else something's kept him down town," Lydia said in her flat, gentle
voice. "Len's not home either ..."
"Praise God from whom all blessings flow!" Martie ejaculated
piously, with her gay, wild laugh. "Tell Lyd who we met, Sally!" she
called back, as she ran downstairs.
She dashed through the dining room, noting with gratitude that dear
old Lyd had set the table in spite of her disapproval. Beyond the
big, gloomy room was an enormous pantry, with a heavy swinging door
opening into a large kitchen. In this kitchen, in the dim light from
one gas jet, and in the steam from sink and stove, Mrs. Monroe and
her one small servant were in the last hot and hurried stages of
dinner-getting.
Martie kissed her mother's flushed and sunken cheek; a process to
which Mrs. Monroe submitted with reproachful eyes and compressed
lips.
"I don't like this, Martie!" said her mother, shaking her head.
"What were you and Sally doing to be so late?"
"Oh, nothing," Martie said ashamedly. "I'm awf'ly sorry. I had no
idea what time it was!"
"Well, I certainly will have Pa speak to you, if you can't get into
the house before dark!" Mrs. Monroe said in mild protest. "Lyd
stopped her sewing to set the table."
"Len home?" Martie, now slicing bread, asked resentfully.
"No. But a boy is different," Mrs. Monroe answered as she had
answered hundreds of times before. "Not that I approve of Len's
actions, either," she added. "But a man can take care of himself, of
course! Len's always late for meals," she went on. "Seems like he
can't get it through his head that it makes a difference if you sit
down when things are ready or when they're all dried up. But Pa's
late anyway to-night, so it doesn't matter much!"
Martie carried the bread on its ugly, heavy china plate in to the
table, entering from the pantry just as her father came in from the
hall.
"Hello, Pa!" said the girl, placing the bread on the wrinkled cloth
with housewifely precision.
Malcolm Monroe gave his youngest daughter glance of lowering
suspicion. But there was no cause for definite question, and Martie,
straightening the salt-cellars lovingly, knew it.
"Where's your sister?" her father asked discontentedly.
"Upstairs, straightening her hair for dinner, I THINK." Martie was
sweetly responsive. "But I can find out, Pa."
"No matter. Here, take these things." Martie carried away the
overcoat and hat, and hung them on the hat rack in the hall.
"Joe Hawkes wants to know if you wish to pay him for driving you up,
Pa," Sally said, coming in from the steps. Dutifully, meekly, she
stood looking at her father. Lydia, coming in from the kitchen, gave
him a respectful yet daughterly kiss. Singly and collectively there
was no fault to be found with the Monroe girls to-night, even by the
most exacting parent.
"Your sister said you were upstairs, Sally," Malcolm said, narrowing
his eyes.
"So I was, Pa, but I came down to light the hall gas, and while I
was there Joe came to the door," Sally answered innocently.
"H'm! Well, you tell him to charge it." Malcolm sat down by the
fireplace. There was no fire, the evening was not cold enough for
one. He began to unlace his shoes. "Brother home?" he asked,
glancing from Lydia, who was filling the water glasses from a glazed
china pitcher, to Martie, who was dragging and pushing six chairs
into place.
"Not yet--no, sir!" the two girls said together unhesitatingly.
Leonard could take care of himself under his father's displeasure.
Martie added solicitously, "Would you like your slippers, Pa? I know
where they are; by the chestard."
He did not immediately answer, being indeed in no mood for a civil
response, and yet finding no welcome cause for grievance. He sat, a
lean, red-faced man, with a drooping black moustache, a high-bridged
nose, and grizzled hair, looking moodily about him.
"Get them--get them; don't stand staring there, Martie!" he burst
out suddenly. Martie caught up his shoes and dashed upstairs.
She went into the large, vault-like apartment that had been her
mother's bedroom for nearly thirty years. To a young and ardent
nature, facing the great question of loving and mating, any place
less indicative of the warmth and companionship of marriage could
hardly have been imagined. The bedstead of heavy redwood was wide,
flat, and hard. It was flanked by a marble-topped table and a chair.
There were two large, curtained bay windows in this room, too, a
faded carpet, a wash-stand with two pallid towels on the rack,
several other stiff-backed chairs, and a large bureau with a square
mirror and a brown marble slab. Over this slab a thin strip of
fringed scarf was laid, and on the scarf stood a brown satin box,
with the word "Gloves" painted over the yellow roses that ornamented
its cover.
This was all. Mrs. Monroe kept in the box an odd castor, an empty
cologne bottle, a new corset string, five coat buttons, a rusty pair
of scissors, an old jet bar-brooch whose pin was gone, and various
other small odds and ends. She had but one pair of gloves, of black
shiny kid, somewhat whitened at the finger-tips, and worn only to
church or to funerals. They were a sort of institution, "my gloves,"
and were kept in the bureau drawer. They distinguished her state
from that of Belle, the maid, who had no gloves at all.
Opposite the bureau, but because of the enormous size of the room,
some twenty-five feet away, was the "chestard" the high "chest of
drawers" that had won its name from the children's contracted
pronunciation. This bleak article of furniture contained the smaller
pieces of Malcolm Monroe's wardrobe, which matched in plainness and
ugliness that of his wife. Stiff white collars caught and rasped
when the shallow upper drawer was opened; the middle drawers were
filled with brownish gray flannels, and shirts stiff-bosomed and
limp of sleeves. But if a curious Martie, making the bed, or putting
away the "wash," ever cautiously tugged out the lowest drawer, she
found it so loaded with papers, old account books, and bundles of
letters as to awe her young soul. These meant nothing to Martie, and
the drawer was heavy to open noiselessly and awkward to close in
haste, yet at intervals now and then she liked to peep at its
mysterious contents.
To-night, however, Martie gave it neither glance nor thought. She
picked up her father's slippers and ran downstairs again, going to
kneel before him and put them on his feet. As she did so her young
warm hand felt the cool, slender length of his foot in the thin
stocking, and she was conscious of repugnance that even the
slightest contact with her father always caused her. There was a
definite antagonism between Malcolm and his youngest daughter,
suspected by neither. But Martie knew that she did not like the
faint odour of his moustache, his breath, and his skin, on those
rather infrequent occasions when he kissed her, and her father was
well aware that in baffling him, evading him, and anticipating him,
Martie was more annoying than the three other children combined.
"Where's your son?" asked the man of the house, as the dinner,
accompanied by his wife, came in from the kitchen.
"I don't know, Pa," Mrs. Monroe said earnestly yet soothingly.
"Come, girls. Come, Pa!"
Malcolm rose stiffly, and went to his place.
"He comes and goes as if his father's house was a hotel, does he?"
he asked, as one merely curious. "Is that the idea?"
"Why, no, Pa." Mrs. Monroe was serving an uninteresting meal on
heavy plates decorated in toneless brown. Soda crackers and sliced
bread were on the table, and a thin slice of butter on a blue china
plate. The teaspoons stood erect in a tumbler of red pressed glass.
The younger girls had old, thin silver napkin rings; their mother's
was of orange-wood with "Souvenir of Santa Cruz" painted on it; and
Lydia and her father used little strips of scalloped and embroidered
linen. Lydia had read of these in a magazine and had made them
herself, and as her daughterly love swept over all the surface
ugliness of his character, she alone among his children sometimes
caught a glimpse of her father's heart. She had an ideal of
fatherhood, had gentle, silent, useless Lydia--formed upon the
genial, sunshiny type of parent popular in books, and she cast a
romantic veil over disappointed, selfish, crossgrained Malcolm
Monroe and delighted in little daughterly attentions to him. She sat
next to him at table, and put her own kindly interpretation upon his
moods.
"I confess I don't understand your tactics with that boy!" he said
now irritably.
"Well, he came in after school, and asked could he go out with the
other boys, and I didn't feel you would disapprove, Pa," Mrs. Monroe
said in a worried voice. "Do eat your dinner before it gets all
cold! Lenny'll be here. You'll get one of your bad headaches ...
here he is!"
For, to the great relief of his mother and sisters, Leonard Monroe
really did break in from the hall at this point, flinging his cap
toward the hat rack with one hand as he opened the door with the
other. A big, well-developed boy of seventeen was Lenny, dearest of
all her children to his mother, her son and her latest-born, and the
secret hope of his father's heart.
"Say--I'm awful sorry to be so late. Gosh! I ran all the way home. I
thought you'd be on the late train, Pa, and I waited to walk up with
you!" said Lenny, falling upon cooling mutton, boiled potatoes
glazed and sticky, and canned corn.
"Where did you wait?" his father asked, laying one of his endless
traps for an untruth.
"Bonestell's," Lenny answered, perceiving and evading it.
"Young Hawkes drove me up," Malcolm said in a mollified tone.
"Oh?" Lenny's mouth opened innocently. "That's the way I missed
you!"
The inevitable ill-temper on their father's part being partly
dissipated by this time, the girls were free to begin a
conversation. Martie's happiness was flooding her spirit like a
golden tide; she was conscious, under all the sordid actualities of
a home dinner, that something sweet--sweet--sweet--had happened to
her. She bubbled news.
Grace Hawkes actually was going to work Monday--Rose was going back
to visit Alma--they had met Doc' Ben, hadn't they, Sally? Oh, and
Rodney Parker was home!
"Lucky stiff!" Lenny commented in reference to Rodney.
"He's awfully nice!" Martie said eagerly. "He walked up with us!"
"With us--with YOU!" Sally corrected archly.
"What time was that?" their father asked suddenly.
"About--oh, half-past four or five. Sally and I went down for the
mail."
"Rodney Parker ..." Leonard began. "Say, mama, this is all cold," he
interrupted himself to say coaxingly.
"I'll warm it for you, Babe," Lydia said, rising as her mother began
to rise, and reaching for the boy's plate.
"Don't call me BABE!" he protested.
His older sister gave his rough head a good-natured pat as she
passed him.
"You're all the baby we have, Lenny--and he was an awfully sweet
baby, wasn't he, ma?" she said.
"Rodney Parker's going to be in the Bank; I bet he doesn't stay,"
Leonard resumed. "Could you get me into the Bank, Pa?"
"Dear me--I remember that boy as such a handsome baby, before you
were born, Martie," her mother said. "And to think he's been through
college!"
"I wish I could go to college, you bet!" observed Lenny. His father
shot him a glance.
"Your grandfather was a college graduate, my son, and as you know
only an accident cut short my own stay at my alma mater--hem!" he
said pompously. "I have no money to throw away; yet, when you have
decided upon a profession, you need only come to your father with a
frank, manly statement of your plans, and what can be done will be
done; you know that." He wiped his moustache carefully, and glanced
about, meeting the admiring gaze of wife and daughters.
"If you've got any sense, you'll go, Len," Martie said. "I wish
you'd let me go study to be a trained nurse, Pa! Miss Fanny wants me
to go into the lib'ary. I bet I could do it, and I'd like it, too ..."
"And speaking of your grandfather reminds me," Malcolm said heavily,
"that one of the things that delayed me to-day was a matter that
came up a week or two ago. When the town buys the old Archer ranch
as a Park, they propose to put twelve thousand dollars into
improvements--"
"Oh, joy!" said Martie. "Excuse me, Pa!"
"The trolley will pass it," her father pursued, "the Park being
almost exactly half-way between Monroe and Pittsville. Now
Pittsville ..."
"What do you bet they get all the glory?" Martie flashed. "Their
Woman's Club..." Her voice fell: "I DO beg your pardon, Pa!" she
said again contritely.
"I can discuss this with your mother," Malcolm said in majestic
patience.
"Oh, no! PLEASE, Pa!"
Her father studied her coldly, while the table waited with bated
breath.
"Pittsville," he resumed in a measured voice, without moving his
eyes from his third daughter, "is, as usual, making a very strong
and a most undignified claim for the Park. They wish it to be known
as the Pittsville Casino. But Selwyn told me to-day that our people
propose to take a leading share of the liability and to call the
Park the Monroe Grove."
He paused. His listeners exchanged glances of surprise and
gratification.
"Not that there's a tree there now!" Martie said cheerfully.
It was an unfortunate speech, breaking irreverently as it did upon
this moment of exaltation. Lydia hastily came to Martie's relief.
"Pa! ISN'T that splendid--for Grandfather Monroe! I think that's
very nice. They know what this town would have amounted to without
HIM! All those fine reference books in the library--and files and
files of bound magazine's! And didn't he give the property for the
church?"
Every one present was aware that he had; there was enthusiastic
assent about the table.
"They propose," Malcolm added as a climax, "to erect a statue of
Leonard Monroe in a prominent place in that Park; my gift."
"Pa!" said a delighted chorus. The girls' shining eyes were moist.
"It was Selwyn's idea that there should be a fund for the cost of
the statue," their father said. "But as the town will feel the added
taxation in any case, I propose to make that my gift. The cost is
not large, the time limit for paying it indefinite."
"Twenty thousand dollars?" Martie, who had a passion for guessing,
ventured eagerly.
"Not so much." But Malcolm was pleased to have the reality so much
more moderate than the guess. "Between two and three thousand."
"Some money!" Leonard exclaimed. He grinned at Martie
contemptuously. "TWENTY!" said he.
"Your sister naturally has not much idea of the value of money,"
Malcolm said, with what was for him rare tolerance. "Yes, it is a
large sum, but I can give it, and if my townspeople turn to me for
this tribute to their most distinguished pioneer ..."
During the rest of the meal no other subject was discussed.
The evening was bright with memories and dreams for Martie. When a
large dish of stewed apples in tapioca had been eaten, the whole
family rose and left the room, and Belle, the little maid, came in
wearily, alone, to attack the disordered table. For two hours the
sound of running water and the dragging of Belle's heavy feet would
be heard in the kitchen. Meanwhile, Belle's mother, in a small house
down in the village, would keep looking at the clock and wondering
whatever had become of Belle, and Belle's young man would loiter
disconsolately at the bridge, waiting.
The three Monroe girls and their mother went into the parlour,
Malcolm going across the hall to a dreary library, where he had an
old-fashioned cabinet desk, and Lenny gaining a reluctant consent to
his request to go down to "Dutch's" house, where he and Dutch would
play lotto.
"Why doesn't Dutch Harrison ever come here to play lotto?" Martie
asked maliciously. "You go to Dutch's because it's right down near
Bonestell's and Mallon's and the Pool Parlour!" Leonard shot her a
threatening glance, accepted a half-permission, snatched his cap and
was gone.
The parlour was large, cold, and uncomfortable, its woodwork brown,
its walls papered in dark green. Lydia lighted the fire, and as
Leonard had made his escape, Belle brought up a supplementary hodful
of coal. Martie lighted two of the four gas jets, and settled down
to solitaire. Sally read "Idylls of the King." Lydia and her mother
began to sew, the older woman busy with mending a hopelessly worn
table-cloth, the younger one embroidering heavy linen with hundreds
of knots. Lydia had been making a parasol top for more than a year.
They gossiped in low, absorbed tones of the affairs of friends and
neighbours; the endless trivial circumstances so interesting to the
women of a small town.
There were two gas jets, also on hinged arms, beside the white
marble fireplace, and one of these Sally lighted, taking her
father's comfortable chair. A hood of thin plum-coloured flannel,
embroidered in coloured flowers, was on the mantel, with shells, two
pink glass vases, and a black marble clock. On the old square piano,
where yellowing sheets of music were heaped, there was a cover of
the same flannel. Albums and gift books, Schiller's "Bell" with
Flaxman plates, and Dante's "Inferno" with Dore's illustrations--lay
on the centre table; Martie pushed them back for her game.
She looked a mere overgrown, untidy girl, to whose hair, belt,
finger-nails, and shoes she might have attended with advantage. But
Martie was a bride to-night, walking the realm of Romance.
She had never had an admirer, nor had Sally. Neither girl admitted
it, but it was true. Poor Lydia had had a taste of the joy of life,
and a full measure of the sorrow, seven years ago, when Clifford
Frost, twelve years her senior, at thirty-one the perfect match, had
singled her out for his favour. Martie and Sally could remember how
pleasantly exciting it was to have Cliff Frost so much at the house,
how Lydia laughed and bloomed! Lydia had been just Sally then: her
age, and her double.
What had gone wrong, the younger girls sometimes wondered. Pa had
been pompous, of course; Cliff had not been made exactly
comfortable, here by this marble mantel. Lydia had quavered out her
happy welcome, her mother had fluttered and smiled. And Cliff had
given her candy, and taken her to the Methodist Bazaar and the Elks'
Minstrels, and had given her a fan. The candy was eaten long ago,
and the dance music and the concerts long forgotten in the village,
but Lydia still had the fan.
For a year, for two, for three, the affair went on. There was a
cloud in the sky before Mary Canfield came to visit Mrs. Frost, but
with her coming, joy died in Lydia's heart. Mary was made for
loving; Mary's mother and father and aunts and cousins all made it
easy for any man to fall in love with her. Mary danced, played the
piano, chattered French, changed from one pretty frock to another,
tirelessly. In short, Mary was a marketable product, and Lydia was
not.
Cliff came to tell Lydia that he and Mary were to be married, and
that she had always been his best pal, and that their friendship had
been one of the sweetest things in his life. He kissed her in
brotherly fashion when he went away. Mary, lovely in bridal silks,
came to call on Lydia a few months later, and to this day when she
met faded, sweet Miss Monroe, the happy little wife and mother would
stop in street or shop and display little Ruth's charms, and chat
graciously for a few minutes. She always defended Lydia when the
Frost and Parker factions lamented that the Monroe girls were
inclined to be "common."
Martie thought of none of these things to-night. She thought of
Rodney Parker, and her heart floated upon clouds of rose-coloured
delight. Dreamily manipulating the cards, she remembered that
twilight meeting. "Are you still a little devil, Martie ... I'm
going to find out." Again they were walking slowly toward the
bridge. "How many people have told you you've grown awfully pretty,
Martie? ... You and I'll get together on the lists. ..."
The girl stopped, with arrested fingers and absent eyes. The rapture
of remembering thrilled her young body like a breath of flame blown
against her. She breathed with deep, slow respirations, holding her
breath with a risen breast, and letting it go with a long sigh. Now
and then she looked with an ashamed and furtive glance from her
mother's gray head and Lydia's busy fingers to Sally's absorbed face
under the opaque white globe of the gaslight, almost as if she
feared that the enchantment that held heart and brain would be
visible to watching eyes.
"Mind you," Lydia was saying in a low tone, "Flora said that Lou
acted very queer, from the very moment she went in--Lou asked her if
she wanted to look at poor Mr. Lowney, and Flora went in, and he was
all laid out, with flowers and all, in that upstairs room where Al
died. Grandma Lowney was there, and--oh, quite a few others, coming
and going, Mrs. Mallon and the Baxter girls. Flora only stayed a
minute, and when she and Lou went out, she says, 'Lou, has Annie
Poett been here since he was taken sick?' and Lou began to cry and
said that her mother answered the telephone when Annie called up
last week, and it seems Annie asked was Joe Lowney sick and Mrs.
King said 'No.'"
"For heaven's sake!" Mrs. Monroesaid, incredulous and absorbed.
"Well, that's what Flora said. But mind you, Ma, on Tuesday night
little Hildegarde King went to the door, and she says that Annie
Poett came in and went upstairs--Lou was dishing supper, you know
the Allens and Mrs. Gorman were there for the funeral, and they were
all at table--and, by the way, Flora says that Lou says that Lizzie
Alien was there in that house for three days--that is, it was nearly
three days, for they stayed for supper Wednesday night--and that
Lizzie never raised her hand to ONE THING, just did nothing but sit
around and cry, and say what a good brother Joe was!"
"Did you ever!" commented Mrs. Monroe.
"Anyway, nobody got up from the table, and all they had for it was
Hildegarde's word, and she wasn't sure it was Annie. Grandma Lowney
was asleep--they'd gotten her to lie down; she took more care of Joe
than any one else, you know, and she sat up both nights. Clara
Baxter says she looks awful; she doesn't believe she'll get over
it."
"I shouldn't wonder!" said Mrs. Monroe with a click of
commiseration.
"Lou told Flora that the night Joe was dying, Grandma broke out and
said to Paul King that if Joe hadn't gone with him out to Deegan
Point two weeks ago, he never would have had that chill. But Flora
says ..."
The low voices went on and on, even after Malcolm Monroe came in,
thoroughly tired and a little chilly, to take his own chair by the
fire. Sally, deposed, came to sit opposite Martie, and idly watched
the solitaire.
"Isn't Rodney Parker nice?" Sally whispered cautiously, after a
while.
"I think he is!" Martie answered hardily; but the happy colour came
to her cheeks.
"I'll bet all the girls go crazy about him!" Sally submitted.
A faint pang of jealousy, a vague sense of helplessness, seized upon
Martie. He had been so cordially gay and delightful with her; would
he be that with all the girls? Would Florence Frost, three years
older than he, fall a victim to his charm as quickly as she, Martie,
had fallen? Martie had mentioned Florence Frost this afternoon, and
by subtle, instinctive, girlish reasoning had found consolation in
his reply. "She's my sister's friend; she's awfully smart, you know-
-books and all that!" Rodney honestly felt an entire indifference to
this admirable young neighbour, and Martie understood his remark as
meaning exactly that.
She went on with her patience, the particular game known as the
"Idle Year." Sometimes Sally touched or mentioned a card. Sometimes,
as a final problem presented itself, the girls consulted as to the
wisdom of this play or that. Between games Martie shuffled
vigorously, and they talked more freely.
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