Books: Martie The Unconquered

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Martie began to speak eagerly and quickly. But her voice died before
Lydia's look.

"Martie! How can you! Speaking of Pa's death in that callous, cold-
blooded way; when poor Ma hasn't been buried three years--and now
dear old Grandma Sark--"

Lydia fumbled for a handkerchief, and began to sob. After a few
moments, in which Martie only offered a few timid pats on her
shoulder for consolation, she suddenly dried her eyes, and began
with bitter clearness:

"I know who has done this, Mart! I don't say much, but I see. I see
now where all your petting of Pa, and humouring Pa, was leading! Oh,
how can you--how can you--how CAN you! My home, the dear old Monroe
place, that three generations of us--but I won't stand it! I feel as
if Ma would rise up and rebuke me! No, you and Pa can decide what
you please, but no power on earth will make me--and where would we
live, might I ask? We couldn't go to the Poor House, I suppose?"

"Pa'd build a lovely house, smaller and more modern, on the
Estates," Martie explained. Lydia assumed a look of high scorn.

"Oh, indeed!" she said, gulping and wiping her eyes again. "Indeed!
Is that so? Move out there so that Len would prosper, so that there
would be one more house out on that DESOLATE flat field--very well,
you and Pa can go! But I stay here!"

And trembling all over, as she always did tremble when forced into
anything but a mildly neutral position, Lydia went upstairs. The
dinner hour was embittered by a painful discussion and by more
tears.

Malcolm was somewhat inclined to waver toward Lydia's view, but
Martie was firm. When Lydia tearfully protested that, just as it
stood, the house would made an ideal "gentleman's estate," Martie
mercilessly answered that at its present level, without electric
light or garage or baths, it was just so much "old wood and
plaster." Lydia winced at this term as if she had been struck.

"How would you pay taxes and interest, if anything happened to Pa?"
Martie demanded briskly.

"We would have no rent to pay," Lydia countered quickly, red spots
burning in her cheeks, and giving her mild face an unusually wild
look. "Why do people own their homes, if there's no economy in it?"

"Rent doesn't come to three thousand a year!" Martie reminded her.
Lydia looked startled. "We could rent that whole upper floor," she
said hesitatingly.

"But you would rather have this place a school house than a
boarding-house?" argued Martie.

Lydia's wet eyes reddened again.

"DON'T say such horrible things, Martie! The way you put things it's
enough to scare Pa to death! Why shouldn't we live here, as we
always have lived?" She turned to her father. "Pa, it's not RIGHT
for you to consider such a change just because Martie---"

"I'm doing it for you, Lyd," Martie said quickly. "I shall be in New
York--"

They hardly heard her; Martie had talked of New York since she was a
child. But Martie suddenly realized that it was true; she had really
been planning and contriving to go back through all these placid
months.

"I'll discuss it with your brother," Malcolm finally said. "I'll see
what Leonard thinks."

"But, Pa," Martie protested, "what does LEN know about it?"

"I suppose a man may be supposed to know more about business than a
woman!" Lydia exclaimed.

"Yes--yes, this is a man's affair," Malcolm conceded, scraping his
chin. "Your brother has been associated with men in business affairs
for years; he had some college work. I'll see Len."

There was nothing more to say. Martie felt instinctively that Len
would approve of the sale of the old place, and she was right, but
it was galling to have his opinion so eagerly sought by her father,
and to have him so gravely quoted. Len, slow witted and suspicious,
thought that there was "something in the idea," but added pompously
that he could not see that the Monroes, as a family, were under any
need of obliging the Frosts and the Tates, and that the property was
there in any case, and there was no occasion for hurry.

Malcolm repeated these views at the dinner table with great
seriousness, and Lydia triumphantly echoed them over and over. As
she and Martie dusted and made beds the older sister poured forth a
quiet stream of satisfied comment. Such things were for men's
deciding, after all, and she, Lydia, never would and never could
understand how they were able to settle things so quickly and so
wisely.

But Martie was not beaten. She knew that Len was wrong; there was no
time to waste. The old Mussoo tract, down at the other end of the
town, was also under consideration, and the deal might be closed any
day. One quiet, wet day she asked Miss Fanny for leave of absence,
and went to the office of old Charley Tate. Mr. Tate was not there,
Potter Street told her, taking his feet from a desk, and slapping
his book shut. However, if there was anything he could do, Mart--?

No; she thanked him. She would go up to the Bank, and see Mr. Frost.
She met Rose coming out as she went in.

"Hello, Martie!" Rose was all cordiality. "Nice weather for ducks,
isn't it? But fortunately you and I aren't sugar or salt, are we?
Were you going to see Rodney?"

"Clifford Frost," Martie told her. Did Rose's face really brighten a
little--she wondered?

"Oh! Well, he's there! Come soon and see Doris!" Rose got into the
motor car, and Martie went into the Bank.

Clifford was a tall man, close to fifty, thinner than Dr. Ben, more
ample of figure than Malcolm. He wore a thin old alpaca coat in the
Bank in this warm spring weather. A green shade was pushed up
against his high forehead, which shone a little, and as Martie
settled herself opposite him, he took off his big glasses, and dried
them in a leisurely fashion with a rotary motion of his white
handkerchief.

He was reputedly the richest man in town, but rich in country
fashion. Such property as he had, cattle, a farm or two, several
buildings in Main Street, and stock in the Bank, he studied and
nursed carefully, not from any feeling of avarice, but because he
was temperate and conservative in all his dealings.

Martie liked his office, much plainer than Rodney's, but with
something dignified about its well-worn furnishings that Rodney's
shining brass and glass and mahogany lacked. She thought that
perhaps Ruth had given her father the two pink roses that were
toppling in a glass on the desk; she eyed the big photograph of
Colonel Frost respectfully.

"Well, well, Mrs. Bannister, how do you do! I declare I haven't seen
much of you since you came back! How's that boy of yours? Nice boy--
nice little feller."

"He's well, thank you, Clifford; he's never been ill. And how's your
own pretty girl?" Martie smiled, using the little familiarity
deliberately.

When he answered, with a father's proud affection, he called her
"Martie," as she suspected he might. She went to her point frankly.
Pa, she explained, was playing fast and loose with the town's offer
for the property. The man opposite her frowned, nodded, and stared
at the floor.

"You girls naturally feel--" he nodded sympathetically.

"Lydia does. But, Clifford, that's just where I need your help. I
think it would be madness not to sell!"

"Madness NOT to?" It was not clear yet. "Then you WANT to?"

She went over her ground patiently. His face brightened with
comprehension.

"I see! Well, now, that puts a different face on it," he said. "Of
course, I want the deal to go through," he admitted, "and if you can
talk your father over--"

"That's what I want you to do!" Martie assured him gaily.

He laughed in answer.

"He don't pay any attention to me!" he confessed. "I's telling him
only yes'day that it wasn't good business to hang onto that piece. I
told--"

"But Clifford," she suggested, "I want you to take this tack. I want
you to tell him that the town has a sentiment about it--the old
Monroe place, you know. Tell him that people feel it OUGHT to be
public property, and then, when he agrees, whip some sort of paper
out of your pocket, and have him sign it then and there!"

Clifford Frost was not quick of thought, but he was shrewd, and his
smile now was compounded of admiration for the scheme and the
schemer alike.

"I declare you're quite a business woman, Martie!" he said. "It's a
pity Len hasn't got it, too. I b'lieve I can work your Pa that way;
anyway, I'll try it! I supposed you girls were hanging on like grim
death to that piece--"

After this the conversation rambled pleasantly; presently, in the
midst of a discussion of mortgages, he took one of the roses, and
called her attention to it. It had had some special care; Martie
could honestly admire it. Clifford told her to keep it, and her blue
eyes met his friendly ones, behind the big glasses, as she pinned it
on her blouse.

"I declare you've got quite a different look since you came back,
Martie," he said. "You're quite a New Yorker! I said to Ruthie a
while back, that there was a strange lady in town; I'd seen her with
Mrs. Joe Hawkes. 'Why, Papa,' she says, 'that's Mrs. Bannister!' I
assure you I could hardly believe it. You've took off considerable
flesh, haven't you?"

"I've had my share," Martie answered in the country phrase, with a
smile and a sigh.

"Well, I guess that's so, too!" he said quickly with an answering
sigh. "What was the--the cause?" he asked delicately. "He was a big,
strong fellow. I remember him quite well; friend of Rodney's."

He told her circumstantially, in return for her brief confidences,
of his wife's death. How she had not been well, and how she had
refused the regular dinner on a certain night, first mentioned as
"the Tuesday," and then corrected to "the Wednesday," and had asked
Polly to boil her two eggs, and then had not wanted them, either.
With loving sorrow he had remembered it all; frank tears came to his
eyes, and Martie liked him for them.

When they parted, he walked with her to the Bank door, and asked
her, if she was interested in roses, to let him drive her up some
day to see his.

"An old-fashioned garden--an old-fashioned garden!" he said, smiling
from the doorway. Martie, pleasantly stirred, went back to the
Library, to put her rose in water and congratulate herself upon her
mission.

"Poor Clifford! He will never get over his wife's death!" Lydia said
that evening. "Where'd you meet him, Mart?"

"I deposited some money in the Bank," Martie said truthfully. "He's
awfully pleasant, I think."

Lydia paid no further attention. She presently went back to another
topic. "Nelson Prout said he was going to take it up with the
Principal. He says there's no earthly reason in the world why
Dorothy shouldn't have passed this Christmas. Elsa told me Dorothy
has been crying ever since and they're worried to death about her--"

Lydia suspected no treachery. What Len and Pa had settled was
settled. She felt that Martie was merely easing her indignation when
the younger sister spent several evenings attempting to write an
article on the subject of economic independence for women. Martie
had tried to write years ago; it was a safe and ladylike amusement.

"What's it all about?" Lydia asked.

"Oh, it's practically an appeal to give girls the same chance that
boys have!"

Lydia smiled.

"But don't they HAVE it? Girls don't want it, that's all."

"Neither do boys, Lyd."

"So your idea would be to force something they didn't want on girls,
just because it's forced on boys?" Lydia said, quietly triumphant.

Martie, looking up from her scratched sheets, smiled and blinked at
her sister for a few seconds.

"Exactly!" she said then, pleasantly.

She finished the little article, and called it "Give Her A Job!" It
was only what she had attempted to express during her first return
visit to Monroe years ago; during those days and nights of fretting
when the thought of Golda White had ridden her troubled thoughts
like an evil dream. Later, she had re-written the article, just
before Wallace's return from long absence to New York. Now she wrote
it again: it was a relief to have it finally polished and finished,
and sent away in the mail. She had never before despatched it so
indifferently.

Even when the editor's brief, pleasant note was in her hand, three
weeks later, and when she had banked the check for thirty-five
dollars, Martie was not particularly thrilled. It was so small a
drop in the ocean of magazine reading--it was so short a step toward
independence! She told Miss Fanny and Sally about it, and for a
month or two watched the magazine for it. Then she forgot it.

CHAPTER IV

She forgot it for a new dream. For long before the tangled
negotiations that surrounded the sale of the old Monroe place were
completed, Martie's thoughts were absorbed by a new and tremendous
consideration: Clifford Frost was paying her noticeable attention.

Monroe saw this, of course, before she did. Without realizing it,
Martie still kept a social gulf between herself and the Frost and
Parker families. They were the richest and most prominent people in
the village, she was just one of the Monroe girls. She was too busy,
and too little given to thought of herself, to waste time on
speculations of this nature.

More than that, Lydia's deep resentment of the sale of the old home
gave Martie food for thoughts of another nature. Lydia never let the
subject rest for an instant. She came to the table red-eyed and
sniffing. It was no use to plant sweet-peas this year, it was no use
to prune the roses. Whether Lydia was sitting rocking on the side
porch silently, through the spring twilight, or impatiently flinging
a setting hen off the nest, with muttered observations concerning
the senseless scattering of the Monroe family before that setting of
eggs could be hatched, Martie felt her deep and angry disapproval.

It was several weeks, and April had clothed Monroe in buttercups and
new grass, before Martie became aware that the name of Clifford
Frost was frequently associated with Lydia's long protests.

"I suppose it's the new way of doing things," she heard her sister
saying one day. "Delicacy--! They don't know what it is nowadays. Do
as you like--run into a man's office--meet him on the steps after
church--!"

Martie felt a sudden prick. She had indeed gone more than once to
Clifford's office, and last Sunday she had indeed chanced to meet
him after church--!

"Tear away old associations!" Lydia was continuing darkly. "Slash--
chop--nothing matters! I know I am old-fashioned," she added, with a
sort of violent scorn. "But I declare it makes me laugh to remember
how dignified _I_ was--Ma used to say that it was born in me to hold
aloof! A man had to say something PRETTY DEFINITE before I was
willing to fling myself into his arms! And what's the result, I'm an
old maid--and I have myself to thank!"

"Lyddy, darling, WHAT are you driving at?"

The sisters were at supper together, on a warm spring Sunday.
Martie, removing from his greasy little hand a chop-bone that Teddy
had chewed white, looked up to see that her sister's face was pale,
and her eyes reddened with tears. Cornered, Lydia took refuge in
pathos.

"Oh--I don't know! I suppose it's just that I cannot seem to feel
that one of those bare little houses in the Estates EVER will seem
like home," faltered Lydia. "You and Pa must do as you think best,
of course--you're young and bright and full of life, and naturally
you forget--but I suppose I feel that Ma--that Ma--!"

She left the table in tears, Martie staring rather bewilderedly
after her. Teddy gazed steadily at his mother, a question in his
dark eyes. He was not a talkative child, except occasionally, when
she and he were alone, but they always understood each other. To
Martie he was the one exquisite and unalloyed joy in life. His
splendid, warm little person was at once the tie that bound her to
the old days, and to the future. Whatever that future might be, it
would bring her nothing of which she could be so proud. Nobody else
might claim him; he was hers.

He suddenly smiled at her now, and slipping from the table with a
great square of sponge cake in his hand, backed up to his mother to
have his napkin untied. He guarded his cake as best he could when
his mother suddenly beset him with a general rumpling and kissing,
and then slipped out into the yard as silently as a little rabbit.

But Martie sat on, musing, trying to catch the inference that she
knew she had missed from Lydia's tirades. Lydia was furious about
the sale of the house, of course--but this new note--?

In a rush, comprehension came. Alone in the dark old dining room, in
the disorder of the Sunday suppertable, Martie's cheeks were dyed a
bright, conscious crimson. Could Lydia mean--could Lydia possibly be
implying that Cliff--that Cliff--?

For half an hour she sat motionless--thinking. The richest--the most
respected man in Monroe, and herself engaged to him, married to him.
But could it be true?

She began to remember, to recall and dissect and analyze her recent
encounters with Clifford, and as she did so, again the warm girlish
colour flooded her cheeks with June. No questioning it, he had
rather singled her out for his companionship of late. Last Sunday,
and the Sunday before, he had come to call--once, most
considerately, the girls thought, to show Pa the plans for the new
High School, once to take Martie and Sally and the children driving.
Martie had sat next him on the front seat, during the drive, her
black veil blowing free about her wide-brimmed hat, her blue eyes
dancing with pleasure, and her cheeks rosy in the cool foggy air.

Well, she was widowed. She was free to marry again. It seemed
strange to her that in eighteen months she had never once weighed
the possibility. She had pondered every other avenue open to women;
she had considered this work and that, but marriage had not once
crossed her mind.

She said to herself that she would not allow herself to think of it
now, probably Clifford had never thought of it, and if he had, he
was notoriously slow about making up his mind. Her only course was
to be friendly and dignified, and to meet the issue when it came.

But if--but if it were her fortune to win the affections of this
man, to take her place, here among her old friends, as their leader
and head, to entertain in the old house with the cupola, under the
plumy maple and locust trees--? If Teddy might grow to a happy
boyhood, here with Sally's children, and friendly, gentle little
Ruth Frost might find a real mother in her father's young wife--?

Martie's blood danced at the thought. She hardly saw Cliff's
substantial figure and kindly face for the glamour of definite
advantages that surrounded him. She would be rich, rich enough to do
anything and everything for Sally's children, for instance. And what
pleasure and pride such a marriage would bring to Lydia, and Pa, and
Sally! And how stupefied Len would be, to have the ugly duckling
suddenly show such brilliant plumage!

She thought of Rodney and Rose. Rodney was getting stout now, he was
full of platitudes, heavy and a little tiresome. Rose was still
birdlike, still sure that what she had and did and said and desired
were the sum of earthly good. A smile twitched Martie's sober mouth
as she thought of Rose's congratulations.

Rose would give her a linen shower, with delicious damp little
sandwiches, and maple mousse, or a dainty luncheon with silk-clad,
flushed women laughing about the table. And Martie would join the
club--be its president, some day--

Meanwhile, once more she must wait. A woman's life was largely
waiting. She had waited on Rodney's young pleasure, years ago;
waited for Wallace, at rehearsals, or at night; waited for news of
Golda; waited for Teddy; and for Wallace again and again; waited for
Pa's letter and the check. Patience, Martie said to her eager heart.

Bright, sisterly, Rose presently came into the office, to put a
plump little arm about Martie, and give her a laughing kiss. Rose
had discovered that Martie was at home again, and wanted her to come
to dinner.

It was one of many little signs of the impending event. Martie had
not been blind to the whispering and watching all about her. Fanny
had subtly altered her attitude, even Sally was changed. Now came
Rose, to prove that the matter was reaching a point where it must be
taken seriously.

Martie went to the dinner, a little ashamed of herself for doing so.
Rose had ignored her for more than a year. But just now she could
not afford to ignore Rose.

She was ashamed of Lydia's innocent pride in the invitation. Sally,
too, who came to the old house to watch Martie dress, had the old
attitude. There was an unexpressed feeling in the air that Martie
was stepping up, and stepping away from them. The younger sister, in
her filmy black, with her bright hair severely banded, and her quiet
self-possession, had some element in her that they were content to
lack.

Lydia's red, clean little hands were still faintly odorous of
chopped onion, as she moved them from hook to hook. Sally wore an
old plaid coat that hung open and showed her shabby little serge
gown. The very room, where these girls had struggled with so many
inadequate garments, where they had pressed and pieced and turned a
hundred gowns, spoke to Martie of her own hungry girlhood.

A motor horn sounded outside. Rodney had come for her. He came in,
in his big coat, and shook hands with Sally and Lydia. His eyes were
on Martie as she slipped a black cloak over her floating draperies,
and the fresh white of throat and arms.

"What have you done to make yourself so pretty?" he asked gallantly,
when they were in the car.

"Am I pretty?" she asked directly, in a pleased tone.

It was a tone she could not use with Rodney. She was astonished to
have him fling his arm lightly about her shoulders for a minute.

"Just as pretty as when you broke my heart eight years ago!" he said
cheerfully. Martie was too much surprised to answer, and as he
busied himself with the turns of the road, she presently began to
speak of other things. But when they had driven into the driveway of
the new Parker house, and had stopped at the side door, he jumped
from the car, and came around it to help her out.

She felt him lightly detain her, and looked up at him curiously.

"Well, what's the matter--afraid of me?"

"No-o." Martie was a little confused. "But--but hadn't I better go
in?"

"Well--what do I get out of it?" he asked, in the old teasing voice
of the boy who had liked to play "Post-office" and "Clap-in-and-
clap-out" years ago.

But they were not children now, and there was reproach in the glance
Martie gave him as she ran up the steps.

Rose, in blue satin, fluttered to meet her and she was conveyed
upstairs on a sort of cloud of laughter and affection. Everywhere
were lights and pretty rooms; wraps were flung darkly across the
Madeira embroidery and filet-work of Rose's bed.

"Other people, Rose?"

"Just the Ellises, Martie, and the Youngers--you don't know them.
And a city man to balance Florence, and Cliff." Rose, hovering over
the dressing-table exclaimed ecstatically over Martie's hair. "You
look lovely--you want your scarf? No, you won't need it--but it's so
pretty--"

She laid an arm about Martie's waist as they went downstairs.

"You've heard that we've had trouble with the girls?" Rose said, in
a confidential whisper. "Yes. Ida and May--after all Rodney had done
for them, too! He did EVERYTHING. It was over a piece of property
that their grandfather had left their father--I don't know just what
the trouble was! But you won't mention them to Rod--?"

Everything was perfection, of course. There were cocktails, served
in the big drawing room, with its one big rug, and its Potocka and
le Brun looking down from the tinted walls. Martie sat between
Rodney and the strange man, who was unresponsive.

Rodney, warmed by a delicious dinner, became emotional.

"That was a precious friendship of ours, to me, Martie," he said.
"Just our boy-and-girl days, but they were happy days! I remember
waking up in the mornings and saying to myself, 'I'll see Martie to-
day!' Yes," said Rodney, putting down his glass, his eyes watering,
"that's a precious memory to me--very."

"Is Rodney making love to you, Martie?" Rose called gaily, "he does
that to every one--he's perfectly terrible!"

"How many children has Sally now?" Florence Frost, sickly,
emaciated, asked with a sort of cluck.

"Four," Martie answered, smiling.

"Gracious!" Florence said, drawing her shawl about her.

"Poor Sally!" Rose said, with the merry laugh that accompanied
everything she said.

Cliff did not talk to Martie at all, nor to any of the other women.
He and the other men talked politics after dinner, in real country
fashion. The women played a few rubbers of bridge, and Rose had not
forgotten a prize, in tissue-paper and pink ribbon. The room grew
hot, and the men's cigars scented the close air thickly.

Rose said that she supposed she should be able to offer Martie a
cigarette.

"It would be my first," Martie said, smiling, and Rose, giving her
shoulders a quick little impulsive squeeze, said brightly: "Good for
you! New York hasn't spoiled YOU!".

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