James Joyce - "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man"

Mark Rutherford - "Mark Rutherford's Deliverance"

Octave Feuillet - "Monsieur de Camors, v3"

Samuel Johnson - "Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, etc."

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




Sally observed amusedly, perhaps a little pityingly, that Lydia
wanted everything. There was nothing in the old house for which
Lydia did not expect to have immediate need in the new. This little
table for the porch, this extra chair for the maid's room, this
mirror, this mattress, this ladder. The older sister reserved enough
furniture to fill the new house twice over; she would presently pack
the new rooms with cumbersome, useless possessions, and go to her
death believing herself the happier for having them.




CHAPTER V


The Eastern editor who had taken her first article presently wrote
her again. Martie treasured his letter with burning, secret pride,
and with perhaps a faint, renunciatory pang. She had pushed in her
opening wedge at last, too late! For no trifling literary success
could change the destined course of Mrs. Clifford Frost.

This was the letter:

DEAR MRS. BANNISTER: We are constantly receiving more letters from
women who read "Give Her A Job," and find that what you had to say
upon an apparently well-worn subject struck a most responsive chord.
Can you not give us another two thousand words upon this, or a
similar subject? This type of article is always most welcome.

That was all. But it inspired Martie to try again. After all, even
as a rich man's wife, she might amuse herself in this way as well as
another.

Between the move from the old house, her wedding plans, the claims
of her husband-to-be, and the Library work, she was busy now, every
instant of the day. Yet she found time, as only a busy woman can,
for writing, and put a new ardour into her attempts, because of the
little beginning of encouragement. Hoping and fearing, she presently
sent a second article on its way.

One July evening she stayed rather late at the Library working on a
report. Clifford was delayed in Pittsville, and would not see her
until after dinner; the rare opportunity was too precious to lose.
In a day or two all Monroe would know of her new plans: in six weeks
she would be Clifford's wife.

When the orderly sheets had been put into a long envelope, Martie
pinned on her white hat, and stepped into the level rays of sunset
light that were pouring into Main Street. The little fruit stand
opposite seemed wilted in the heat; hot little summer breezes were
tossing chaff and papers about the street.

Martie's eyes instantly found an unexpected sight: a low, rakish
motor car drawn up to the curb. She had not seen it before in
Monroe, nor did she recognize the man who sat on the seat next the
driver's seat, with his hat pulled over his eyes.

The driver, a handsome big fellow of perhaps forty or more, had just
jumped from the car, and now came toward her. She smiled into a
clever, unfamiliar face that yet seemed oddly recognizable. He asked
her something.

"I beg your pardon?" she had to say, her eyes moving quickly from
him to his companion, who had turned about in the seat, and was
watching them. Her heart stopped beating for a second, then,
commenced to race. Her colour rose in a radiant flood. With three
swift steps she had passed the big man, and was at the curb, and
leaning over the car.

"John--!" she stammered. "My dear--my dear!"

The man in the car turned upon her the smile she knew so well: a
child's half-merry, half-wistful smile, from sea-blue eyes in fair
lashes. Time vanished, and Martie felt that she might have seen it
yesterday; have felt yesterday the muscular grip of John Dryden's
hand. Bewildered at their own emotion, laughing and confused, their
fingers clung together.

"Hello--Martie!" he said, in a shaken voice, his blue eyes suddenly
blazing as he saw her. Martie's eyes were wet, her delight turning
her cheeks to rose. John did not speak, unless his burning eyes
spoke; and Martie for a few minutes was hardly intelligible. It was
the stranger who spoke.

"I'm Dean Silver, Mrs. Bannister--you don't have to be introduced to
me, because I know John here. You're his favourite topic, you know."

"Dean Silver!" Martie smiled bewilderedly at the novelist; she knew
that name! He was a writer with twenty books to his credit. He had a
ranch somewhere in California; he spent his winters there. Some hazy
recollection struggled for recognition.

"But, John!" she laughed. "Here in Monroe! My dear, you'll never
know what it meant to glance up and see you--and you look so well!
And you're famous, too; isn't it wonderful! And, tell me, what
brings you to California!"

The quick, authoritative glance was delightfully familiar, yet
somehow new.

"Why, you brought me, of course, Martie," he said unsmilingly, as if
any other supposition would have been absurd. He had not spoken
before; she knew now that she had hungered for his rather deep,
ready voice. Her colour came up, her heart gave a curious twist, and
she dropped her eyes.

"Dryden and I have been batching it together in New York," said Dean
Silver. "My wife's been here since April with her mother and our
kid. When I came on, I got Dryden here to come, too. They want me to
take a long sea trip: I hope you'll help me persuade him to come,
too. He's trying to double-cross me on it, I think. He said he'd
come as far as California, and then see how things looked. So we
shipped the car last month, and left New York a week ago to-day."

"Well, Monroe is honoured," Martie smiled, amused, fluttered, a
little confused by this open recognition of John's feeling. "But now
that you're here, I don't know quite what to do with you!"

"There's a hotel?" asked the novelist.

"Oh, it's not that. I'm only anxious to make the most of you," said
Martie. "We've more than enough room at our house! But, like poor
Fanny Squeers, I do so palpitate!"

"Palpitate away!" said Dean Silver. "We're in your hands. You can
send us off right now, or let us take you to dinner somewhere, or
direct us to the hotel--for three thousand miles our main idea was
to find you, and we've done it!"

"Well, but JOHN!" Martie was still dazed and exulting. "It's so GOOD
to see you!"

"I had to see you," he said, in his simple way, his eyes never
leaving her.

"But now, let me plan!" she said, with an excited laugh. "If you'll
let me get in the car with you, and--and let me see, we'd better get
something extra for company--"

"Now, that's just what you shan't do," Dean Silver said decisively.
"I don't propose to have you--"

"Oh, she likes it," John assured him, with his dreamy air that was
yet so positive. "Don't waste time, Dean."

Martie laughed; John sat between herself and the novelist in the
wide seat. He turned his head so that she was always under the fire
of his adoring eyes. And in the old way he laughed, thrilled,
exulted in everything she said

Half an hour later, as gaily as if she had known them both all her
life, she introduced them to Pa. Pa, whose youngest daughter was
just now in high favour, was mildly pleased with the invasion. This
impromptu hospitality smacked of prosperity, of worldliness. He went
stiffly into the study with John, to bore the poet with an old
volume about California: "From the Padres to the Pioneers."

Martie, cheerfully setting the dining table, kept a brisk
conversation moving with Dean Silver, who sat smoking on the side
porch.

Presently she came put with an empty glass bowl, which she set down
beside him. He followed her down into the tipsy brick paths, under
the willows, while she gathered velvet wallflowers to fill it.

"You're very clever at this village sort of thing," the writer said.
"And I must say I like it myself. Old-fashioned street full of kids
streaming in for ice-cream, garden with stocks and what-you-call-
'ems all blooming together--you know, I had a sort of notion you
weren't half as nice as you are!"

Martie laughed, pleased at the frank audacity.

"You fit into it all so pleasantly!" he expanded his thought.

"I don't know why you say that," she answered, surprised. "I was
born here. I belong here. I lived for years in New York without
being able to demonstrate that I could do anything better!"

"Dryden has a great idea of what you can do," Silver suggested.

"Oh, well, John!" she laughed maternally. "If you've been listening
to John--"

"I've HAD to listen to him," the novelist said mildly.

"Tell me," she said suddenly, "I don't want to say the awkward thing
to him--has he got his divorce?"

He looked at her, amazed.

"Don't you correspond?"

"Twice a year, perhaps."

Dean Silver flung away his cigarette, and sunk his hands in his
pockets.

"Certainly he's divorced," he said briefly.

Martie's heart thumped. The flowers in her hands, she stood staring
away from him, unseeing.

"I hope you'll forgive me--I feel like a fool touching the thing at
all," Dean Silver said, after a silence. "But I thought that there
was some sort of an understanding between you."

"Oh, no!" Martie half-whispered, with a fluttered breath.

"There isn't?" he asked, in a tone of keen protest.

"Oh, no!"

The novelist whistled a few notes and shrugged his shoulders.

"Well, then, there isn't," he said philosophically. He stooped to
pick a fragrant spike of mignonette, and put it in his buttonhole.
When he began speaking again, he did not look at Martie. "A few of
us have come to know Dryden well, this winter," he said gravely.
"He's a rare fellow, Mrs. Bannister--a big man, and he's got his
field to himself. You wouldn't believe me if I told you what a fuss
they've been making over him--back there, and how little it matters
to him. He's going a long way. You--you've got to be kind to him, my
dear girl."

"I'm a Catholic, and he's a divorced man," Martie said, turning
troubled eyes toward him. "I never thought of him in that way!"

Dean Silver raised his eyebrows.

"People are still believing that sort of thing, are they?"

"Only about a hundred million!" she answered, drily in her turn.

The man laughed shortly.

"Sweet complication!" he observed.

"More than that," Martie said hurriedly, "I'm engaged to be married
to the president of the bank here, in about six weeks!"

Their eyes met steadily for a full minute.

"I devoutly trust you are not serious?" said Dean Silver then.

"Oh, but I am!" she said, with a nervous laugh.

For answer he merely shrugged his shoulders again. In silence they
turned toward the house.

"That is an actual settled fact, is it?" Silver asked, when they
were at the steps.

"Why, yes!" Martie answered, feeling a strange inclination toward
tears. "I've been here for a year and a half," she added lamely.
"I've not seen John--I tell you I never thought of him as anything
but Adele's husband! And Clifford--the man I am to marry--is a good
man, and it means a home for life for my boy and me--and it means
the greatest pleasure to my father and sisters--"

"I think I never heard such a damnable set of reasons for a
beautiful woman's marriage!" Silver said, as she paused.

Martie could find no answer. She was excited, bewildered, thrilled,
all at once. She felt that another word would be too much. Silently
she picked up her bowl and her flowers, and crossed the porch to the
house.

Lydia, coming in late from a meeting of the Fair Committee, was
speechless. In a pregnant silence she lent cold aid to her audacious
sister. The big bed in Len's room was made, the bureau spread with a
clean, limp towel. Pauline was interviewed; she brightened. Dean
Silver was from Prince Edward's Island, too, it seemed. Pauline
could make onion soup, and rolls were set, thanks be! She could open
preserves; she didn't suppose that sliced figs were good enough for
a company dessert.

They had the preserves, and the white figs, too; figs that Teddy and
Martie had knocked that morning from the big tree in the yard. Lydia
noticed with resentment that Pa had really brightened perceptibly
under the unexpected stimulus. It was Lydia who said mildly, almost
reproachfully, "I'm sorry that I have to give you a rather small
napkin, Mr. Dryden; we had company to dinner last night, and I find
we're a little short--"

John hardly heard her; he saw nothing but Martie, and only rarely
moved his eyes from her, or spoke to any one else. He glowed at her
lightest word, laughed at her mildest pleasantry; he frequently
asked her family if she was not "wonderful."

This was the attitude of that old lover of her dreams, and in spite
of amusement and trepidation and nervous consciousness that she was
hopelessly entangling her affairs, Martie's heart began to swell,
and her senses to feel creeping over their alertness a deadly and
delicious languor. She had been powerless all her life: she thrilled
to the knowledge of her power now.

Dean Silver easily kept the conversation moving. They learned that
he had been overworking, had been warned by his physician that he
must take a rest. So he and John were off for the Orient: he himself
had always wanted to sail up the Nile, and to see Benares.

"John, what a year in fairyland!" Martie exclaimed.

"Well, that's what I tell him," said the novelist. "But he isn't at
all sure he wants to go!"

As John merely gave Martie an unmistakable look at this, she tried
hurriedly for a careless answer.

"John, you would be mad not to go!"

"You and I will talk it over after awhile," he suggested, with an
enigmatic smile.

This was terrible. Martie gave one startled look at Lydia, who had
compressed her mouth into a thin line of disapproval. Lydia was
obviously thinking of Cliff, who might come in later. Martie found
herself unable to think of Cliff.

They had coffee in the garden, in the still summer dusk. Teddy
rioted among the bushes, as alert and strategic as was his gray
kitten. John sat silent beside Martie, and whenever she glanced at
him she met his deep smile. Lydia preserved a forbidding silence,
but Malcolm's suspicions of his younger daughter were pleasantly
diverted by the novelist. Dean Silver was probing into the early
history of the State.

"But there must have been silver and gold mines up as far as this,
then; aren't you in the gold belt?"

"In the year 1858," Malcolm began carefully, "a company was formed
here for the purpose of investigating the claims made by--"

John finished his coffee with a gulp, and walked across the dim
grass to Martie, and she rose without a word.

"Martie, isn't it Teddy's bedtime?" asked Lydia. John frowned
faintly at her.

"Can't you put him to bed?" he asked directly. Lydia's cool cheek
flushed.

"Why, yes--I will--" she answered confusedly. Martie called her
thanks over her shoulder as they walked away. She was reminded of
the day she had called on John at his office.

Quick and shaken, the beating of her heart bewildered her; she
hardly knew where they walked, or how they began to talk. The
velvety summer night was sweet with flowers; the moon would be late,
but the sky was high and dark, and thick with stars. In the silver
glimmer the town lights, and the dim eye of the dairy, far up on the
range, burned red. Children were shouting somewhere, and dogs
barking; now and then the other mingled noises were cut across by
the clear, mellow note of a motor car's horn.

They came to the lumber-yard by the river, and went in among the
shadowy piles of planks. The starry dome was arched, infinitely far
and yet friendly, above them; the air here was redolent of the clean
wood. From houses near by, but out of sight beyond the high wall,
they heard occasional voices: a child was called, a wire-door
slammed. But they were alone.

John was instantly all the acknowledged if not the accepted lover.
Once fairly inside the fence, she found her heart beating madly
against his own; as tall as he, she tried to deny him her lips. Her
arms were pinioned. Man and woman breathed fast.

"Martie--my wonderful--my beautiful--girl! I never lived until now!"
he said after a silence.

"But, John--John--" He had taken her off her guard; she was
stammering like a school-girl. "Please, dear, you mustn't--not now.
I want to talk to you--I must. Won't you wait until we have had a
talk--please--you're frightening me!"

His hold was instantly loosed.

"My dearest child, I wouldn't frighten you for anything in the
world. Let us have the talk--here, climb up here! It was only--
realizing--what I've been dreaming about all these months! I'm flesh
and blood, you know, dear. I shall not feel myself alive--you know
that!--until you are in my arms, my own--my wife."

She had seated herself on the top of the pile; now he sat on the
ledge that was a few inches lower, and laid his arms across her
knees, so that his hands were clasped in both her own. Her senses
were swimming, her heart itself seemed turned to liquid fire, and
ran trembling through her body.

"My wife!" John said, eager eyes fairly devouring her. "My glorious
wife, the loveliest woman in the world! Do you know what it means,
Martie? Do you know what it means, after what we both have known?"

The sight of his wistful, daring smile in the starlight, the touch
of his big, eager hands, and the sound of the odd, haunting voice
turned the words to magic. She tightened her fingers on his.

"I bought the Connecticut house on the river," he said presently.
"It belonged to a carpenter, a fine fellow; but the railroad doesn't
go there, and he and his wife wanted to go to a bigger place. Silver
and I went up and saw it, but I didn't want to do anything until you
came. But there are rocks, you know--" Hearing something between a
laugh and a sigh, he stopped short. "Rocks," he repeated, "you know
all those places are rocky!"

"I know, dearest boy!"

The term overwhelmed him. She heard him try to go on; he choked,
glanced at her smilingly, and shook his head. A second later he laid
his face against her hands, and she felt that it was wet.

The clock in the Town Hall struck nine--struck ten, and still they
sat on, sometimes talking, sometimes staring up at the steadily
beating stars. Quiet fell upon Monroe, lights moved in the little
houses and went out. There was a little stir when the crowd poured
out from the moving pictures: voices, shouts, laughter, then silence
again.

Suddenly Martie decreed their return to the house. But the ecstasy
of finding each other, again was too new. They passed the dark old
gateway to the sunken garden, and walked on, talking thirstily,
drinking deep of the joy of words.

Hand in hand they went up the hill, and time and space might have
equally been demolished. That hill had seemed a long climb to Martie
years ago: to-night it seemed a dream hill, she and John were so
soon at its little summit.

Below them lay the dark village and the furry tops of trees flooded
with gray moonlight. The odours of a summer night crept out to meet
them, odours of flowers and dew-wet, sunburned grass. The roadside
fences were wreathed with wild blackberry vines that took weird
shapes in the dark. In the idle fields spreading oaks threw shadows
of inky blackness.

Martie hardly thought of Clifford. Across her spinning senses an
occasional thought of him crept, but he had no part in to-night. To-
morrow she must end this dream of exquisite fulfillment, to-morrow,
somehow, she must send John away. But to-night was theirs.

Their talk was that of lovers, whose only life is in each other's
presence. They leaned on an old fence, above the town, and whether
they were grave, or whether Martie's gay laugh and his eager echoing
laugh rang out, the enchantment held them alike.

It was after one o'clock when they came slowly down the hill, and
let themselves silently into the shadowy garden. Martie fled
noiselessly past the streak of light under Lydia's door, gained her
own room, and blinked at her lighted gas.

The mirror showed her a pale, exalted face, with glittering blue
eyes under loosened bronze hair. She was cold, excited, tired, and
ecstatic. She moved the sprawling Teddy to the inside of the bed,
stooping to lay her cold cheek and half-opened lips to his flushed
little face. She got into a wrapper, her hair falling free on her
shoulders, and sat dreaming and remembering.

Lydia, in her gray wrapper, came in, with haggard, reproachful eyes.
Lydia was pale, too, but it was the paleness of fatigue, and had
nothing in common with Martie's starry pallor.

"Martie, do you know what time it is?"

"Lyd--I know it's late!"

"Late? It's two o'clock."

"Not really?" Martie bunched her splendid hair with a white hand
under each ear, and faced her affronted sister innocently.

"Don't say 'not really!'" Lydia, who happened to hate this
expression, which as a matter of fact Martie only used in moments of
airy rebellion, said sharply: "If that man hasn't any sense, you
ought to have!"

"We used to be intimate friends a few years ago," Martie offered
mildly. "We had a lot to say."

"A lot that couldn't be said before Pa and me, I suppose?" Lydia
asked bitingly. Martie was silent. "What do you propose to tell
Cliff of this delightful friendship?" Lydia pursued. "And how long a
visit do your friends propose to make?"

"Only until to-morrow. Mrs. Silver wants me to visit them, you know,
at Glen Mary."

"Do you intend to go?" Lydia asked stonily.

"Well, I suppose not. But it would be a wonderful experience, of
course. But I suppose not." Martie sighed heavily. "I really hadn't
thought it out," she pleaded.

"I should think you hadn't! I never heard anything like it," Lydia
said. "I should think the time had come when you really might think
it out--I don't know what things are coming to--"

"Oh, Lyddy dear, don't be so tiresome!" Martie said rudely. Lydia at
once left the room, with a short goodnight, but the interrupted mood
of memories and dreams did not return. Martie sat still a long time,
wrapped in the blanket she caught from the bed, staring vaguely into
space.

"I've got to think it all out," she told herself, "I mustn't make--
another mistake."

And yet when she crept in beside Teddy, and flung her arm about him,
she would not let the half-formed phrase stand. The step that had
brought her splendid boy to her arms was not a mistake.

She slept lightly, and was up at five o'clock. Teddy, just shifting
from the stage when nothing could persuade him to sleep in the
morning to the stage when nothing could persuade him to wake, merely
rolled over when she left him. Martie, bathed, brushed, dressed in
white, went into the garden. They had arranged no meeting, but John
came toward her under the pepper trees as she closed the door.

Again they walked, this time in morning freshness. Martie showed him
the school gate, with "Girls" lettered over it, where she had
entered for so many years. They walked past the church, and up
toward the hills. She said she must get home in time to help Pauline
with breakfast for the augmented family, and John went with her into
the old kitchen, and cut peaches and mixed muffins with the
enthusiasm of an expert, talking all the time.

"But tell me about Adele, John!" she said suddenly, when Lydia and
her father had left the breakfast table, and they two were alone
again. "How do you EXPLAIN it?"

"Oh, well!" He brought his mind with an obvious effort to Adele. "We
had sort of a hard time of it--she wasn't well, and I wasn't. Her
sister came on--she's--she's quite a woman!" Evidently still a
little impressed by some memory, he made a wild gesture with his
hands. "She thought I didn't understand Adele?" he went on
questioningly. "After she left, Adele simply went away. She went to
a boarding-house where she knew the woman, and when I went there to
see her she told me that it was all over. That's what she said: it
was all over. I went to see the doctor, and he didn't deny that they
had gone somewhere--Atlantic City, I think it was, together! She
asked for a divorce, and I gave it to her, and her sister came on to
stay with her for the time she got it. She seemed awfully unhappy.
It was just before my book was taken. Her sister said she was
unlucky, and I guess she was--poor Adele!"

"And there was never any fight, or any special cause?"

"Oh, no!" He smiled his odd and charming smile. "But I think I bored
her!" he said. "I do bore most people! But most people don't--don't
understand me, Martie," he went on, with a quality almost like
hunger in his eyes and voice. "And that's why I have been longing
and longing to see you again. YOU understand! And with you I always
feel as if I could talk, as if what I said mattered, as if--well, as
if I had been on a hot desert walk, and came suddenly to trees, and
shade, and a bubbling spring!"

"You poet!" she smiled. But a pang shook her heart. It was sweet, it
was perilously sweet, but it could not be for long now.

"John," she began, when like a happy child he had loitered out with
her to feed the chickens, "I've got something to tell you. I'm
sorry."

Scattering crumbled cornbread on the pecked, bare ground under the
willows, he gave her a confiding look. Her heart stopped.

"It's about Mr. Frost," Martie went on, "I've known him all my life;
he's one of the nicest men here. I'm--I'm engaged to him, John!"

His hand arrested, John looked at her steadily. There was a silence.