Books: Martie The Unconquered

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"How do you mean--to be married?" he asked tonelessly, without
stirring.

Martie nodded. Under the willows, and in the soft fog of the
morning, the thing suddenly seemed a tragedy.

"Aren't you," he said simply, "aren't you going to marry me?"

His tone brought the tears to her eyes.

"I can't!" she whispered. "John, I'm sorry!"

"Sorry," he echoed dully. "But--but I don't understand. You can't
mean that you have promised--that you expect--to marry any one else
but me?" And as Martie again allowed a silence to fall, he took a
few steps away from her, walking like a person blinded by sudden
pain. "I don't understand," he said again. "I never thought of
anything but that we belonged to each other--I've thought of it all
the time! And now you tell me--I can't believe it! Is it settled? Is
it all decided?"

"My family and his family know," Martie said.

"Oh, but Martie--you can't mean that!" he burst out in agony. "What
have I done! What have I done--to have you do this! You don't love
him!"

"John," she said steadily, catching his hands, "even if I were free,
you aren't, dear. We could never be married while Adele lives."

He turned his steady gaze upon her.

"Then last night--" he asked gravely.

"Last night I was a fool, John--I was all to blame! I'm so sorry--
I'm so terribly sorry!"

"I thought last night--" He turned away under the willows, and she
anxiously followed him. "You let me think you cared!"

"John, I do care!"

"You SAID you did!"

"I don't know what was the matter with me," Martie said wretchedly,
"I was so carried away by seeing you so suddenly--and thinking of
old times--and of all we had been through together--"

"But it wasn't of that we talked, Martie!"

"I know." Her head drooped. "I know!"

"I'm so sorry," he said, bewildered and hurt. "I don't understand
you. I can't believe that you are going to marry that man, whoever
he is; you didn't say anything about him last night! Who is he--what
right has he got to come into it?"

"He's a good and honourable man, John, and he asked me. And I said
yes."

"You said yes--loving me?"

"Oh, John dear--you don't understand--"

"No," he said heavily, "I confess I don't."

The tone, curt and cold, brought tears to her eyes, and he saw them.
Instantly he was all penitence.

"Martie--ah, don't cry! Don't cry for me! Don't--I tell you, or I
shall rush off somewhere--I can't see you cry! I'll try to
understand. But you see last night--last night made me hope that you
might care for me a little--I couldn't sleep, Martie, I was so
happy! But I won't think of that. Now tell me, I'm quite quiet, you
see. Tell me. You don't mean that you don't--feel anything about
it?"

"John," she said simply, "I don't know whether I love you or not. I
know that--that last night was one of the wonderful times of my
life. But it came on me like a thunderbolt--I never felt that way
before--even when I was first engaged, even when I was married! But
I don't know whether that's love, or whether it's just you--the
extraordinary effect of you! You belong to one of the hardest parts
of my life, and at first, last night, I thought it was just seeing
you again--like any other old friend. Now--this morning--I don't
know." She stopped, distressed. The man was silent. "If I've really
made you unhappy, it will kill me, I think," Martie began, again,
pleadingly. "How can I go on into this marriage feeling that you are
lonely and hurt about it?"

They had sat down on the old iron bench that had for fifty years
stood rooted in the earth far down at the end of the garden, under
pepper trees and gnarled evergreens and rusty pampas grass.

"I thought you would marry me," John said, "and that we would go to
live in the farmhouse with the white rocks."

His tone made her eyes fill again.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"Yes, but I can't leave it this way, Martie," John said. "If I DID
come suddenly upon you, if I DID take you by surprise: why, I can
give you time. You can have all the time you want! I'll stay here in
the village--at the hotel, and see you every day, and we'll talk
about it."

"Talking wouldn't make you anything but a divorced man, John," she
said.

"But you can't blame me for that--Adele did that!"

"Yes, I know, dear. But the fact is a fact, just the same."

"But--" He began some protest eagerly; his voice died away.

"See here, John." Martie locked her hands about the empty, battered
pan that had held the chickens' breakfast. "I was a girl here, ten
years ago, and I gave my parents plenty of trouble. Then I married,
and I suffered--and paid--for that. Then I came home, shabby and sad
and poor, and my father and sister took me in. Now comes this
opportunity to make a good man happy, to give my boy a good home, to
make my father and sisters proud and satisfied, to do, in a word,
the dutiful, normal thing that I've been failing to do all these
years! He loves me, and--I've known him since I was a child--I do
truly love him. This is July--we are to be married in August."

"You are NOT!" he said, through set jaws.

"But I am. I've always been a trial and a burden to them, John--I
could work my hands to the bone, more, I could write another 'Mary
Beatrice' without giving them half the joy that this marriage will
give!"

"That's the kind they are!" he said, with a boyish attempt at a
sneer.

She laughed forgivingly, seeing the hurt beneath the unworthy
effort, and laid her fingers over his.

"That's the kind I am, too! This is my home, and this is my life,
and God is good to me to make it so pleasant and so easy!"

"Do you dare say, Martie, that if it were not for Adele you would
not marry me?"

Martie considered seriously.

"No, I can't say that, John. But you might as well ask me what I
would do if Cliff's wife were alive and yours dead!"

"I see," he said hopelessly.

For a few minutes there was silence in the old garden. John stared
at the neglected path, where shade lay so heavily that even in
summer emerald green moss filmed the jutting bricks. Martie
anxiously watched him.

"What do you want me to do?" he asked, presently, in a dead voice.

"I ask you not to make my life hard again, just when I have made it
smooth," she said eagerly. "I've been fighting all my life, John--
now I've won! I'm not only doing something that pleases them, I'm
doing the one thing that could please them most! And that means joy
for me, too--it's ALL right, for every one, at last! Dear, if I
could marry you, then that would be something else to think about,
but I can't. It would never be a marriage at all, in my eyes--"

"Oh, how I hate this petty talk of marriage, and duty, and all the
rest of it!" he burst out bitterly. "Tied to a little village, and
its ideals--YOU! Oh, Martie, why aren't you bigger than all this,
why don't you snap your fingers at them all? Come away with me--come
away with me, Sweetheart, let's get out of it--and away from them!
You and I, Martie, what do we need of the world? Oh, I want you so--
I want you so! We'll go to Connecticut, and live on the bank of our
river, and we'll make boats for Teddy--"

Teddy! If she had been wavering, even here in the old garden, which
was still haunted for her with memories of little girl days, of
Saturday mornings with dolls, houses and sugar pies, the child's
name brought her suddenly to earth. Teddy--! That was her answer.

She got to her feet, and began to walk steadily toward the house. He
followed her.

"I ask you--for my sake--to give up the thought of it," she said
firmly. "I BEG you--! I want you to go away--to India, John, and
forget me--forget it all!"

He walked beside her for a moment in silence. When he spoke his
voice was dead and level.

"Of course if you ask me, the thing is done, my dear!"

"Thank you, John," she said, with a sinking heart.

"Not at all."

When they reached the side doorway, he went quickly and quietly in.
Dean Silver, sauntering around from the front garden, met her. He
had his watch in his hand. The gray car was waiting in the drive.

"If we have to make Glen Mary to-night, Mrs. Bannister," he began.
"And I want your answer to my wife's invitation," he added, with a
concerned and curious look at her agitated face.

"Oh, Mr. Silver," she said unhappily, "I can't come and visit you--
it's all been a mistake--I think I must have been crazy last night!
I'm so sorry--but things can't be changed now, I want you to take
him away--to sail up the Nile--if you really are going--"

"My dear girl," the man said patiently, "he hasn't the faintest idea
of sailing with me--I wish to the Lord he had!"

"He said he would," she said lifelessly.

"Dryden did?" Silver turned upon her suddenly.

"Yes, he just said he would."

"DRYDEN?"

"Yes." Martie picked a dead marguerite from a bush, and crumbled it
in her fingers.

"When did he?"

"Just now."

Dean Silver looked keenly at her face and shook his head
bewilderedly.

"You are really going through with it, then?"

"Oh, yes, I must!" she answered feverishly. And she added: "I want
to!"

"I see you want to!" the novelist said drily. And his voice had lost
its brotherly, affectionate tone when he added: "Very well, then, if
you two have settled it between you, I will not presume to
interfere, I was going down to the city to-morrow to see about
reservations; if Dryden means it--of course it alters the entire
aspect of affairs to me!"

"Oh, don't use that tone!" she said agitatedly, "I didn't ask him to
come here--I never encouraged him--why, I never thought of him! Am I
to blame?"

"Look here," said Silver suddenly. "You can't fool me. You know you
love him!"

Martie did not answer. Her colour had faded, and she looked pale and
tired. She dropped her eyes Pity suddenly filled his own.

"I'm sorry!" the man said quickly; "I'm awfully sorry. I'll help you
if I can. He may buck the last moment, but perhaps he won't. And you
think it over. Think it all over. And if you send me a wire one
minute before the boat sails--that'll be time enough! We'll come
back. I'll keep you informed--and for God's sake, wire if you can!"

"We'll leave it that way," Martie said gratefully.

"I believe you'll wire," Silver said, with another searching look.
She only shrugged her shoulders wearily in answer.

They were silent for a few minutes, and then John came out of the
house with his bag in his hand. Lydia followed him down the steps.

Lydia was somewhat puzzled by the manner of the visitors, but
relieved to see that they were not planning to strain the
hospitality of the house for lunch. It was merely a question of
thanks and good-byes now, and these she had come forth to receive
with dignity.

"Your suitcase is in?" John said to his friend. He put his own into
the rumble, snaps were snapped and locks closed. He did not look at
Martie. He lifted his cap, and took Lydia's hand. "Good-bye, Miss
Monroe, and thank you. Good-bye, Martie. Everything all right,
Dean?"

He got into his seat. Lydia gave her hand in turn to the novelist.

"You mustn't count on a visit from this girl here, at Glen Mary,"
Lydia said in pleasant warning. "She's going to be a pretty busy
girl from now on, I expect!"

"So she was saying," Dean Silver said gravely. "Our own plans may be
changed," he added casually. "I may yet persuade Dryden here to sail
up the Nile with me!"

"I certainly think any one who has such a wonderful opportunity
would be foolish to decline it," Lydia observed cheerfully.

"Good-bye," said the writer to Martie. "You'll wire me if you can, I
know!"

"Good-bye," she said, hardly conscious of what was being done and
said, in the fever of excitement that was consuming her. "And thank
you!"

He jumped into the car. Martie, trembling, stepped back beside Lydia
as the engine began to throb.

"Good-bye, John," she faltered. John lifted his cap; the driver
waved a gloved hand.

They were gone.

"I'm so glad you told him about your engagement, Martie!" Lydia said
approvingly. "It was the only honest thing to do. And dear me, isn't
it quite a relief to think that they've had their visit, and it's
over, and everything is explained and understood?"

"Isn't it?" Martie echoed dully.

She went upstairs. The harsh light of the summer noon did not
penetrate the old Monroe house. Martie's room was full of greenish
light; there was an opaque streak across the old mirror where she
found her white, tired face.

She flung herself across the bed. Her heart was still beating high,
and her lips felt dry and hot. She could neither rest nor think, but
she lay still for a long while.

Chief among her confused emotions was relief. He had come, he had
frightened and disturbed her. Now he was gone again. She would
presently go down to mash Teddy's baked potato, and serve watery
canned pears from the pressed glass bowl. She would dress in white,
and go driving with Cliff and Teddy and Ruth in the late afternoon.
Life would resume its normal placidity.

A week from to-day Rose and Sally would give her the announcement
party. Martie resolutely forced her thoughts to the hour of John's
arrival: of what had she been thinking then? Of her wedding gown of
blue taffeta, and the blue straw hat wreathed with roses. She must
go down to the city, perhaps, for the hat--?

But the city brought John again to her mind, and for a few delicious
minutes she let herself remember his voice, his burning words, his
deep, meaning look.

"Well, it's wonderful--to have a man care that way!" she said,
forcing herself to get up, and set about dressing. "It's something
to have had, but it's over!"

CHAPTER VI

Over, however, the episode was not, and after a few days Martie
realized with a sort of shame that she did not wish it to be over.
She could not keep her memory away from the enchanted hours when
John's presence had lent a glory to the dark old house and the
prosaic village. She said with a pang: "It was only yesterday--it
was only two--only three--days ago, that he was here, that all the
warmth and delight of it was mine!"

The burning lightness and dryness seemed still to possess her: she
was hardly conscious of the days she was living, for the poignancy
and power of the remembered days. The blue taffeta dress had lost
its charm, everything had grown strangely dull and poor.

She passed the lumber-yard with a quickened heart; she climbed the
hill alone, and leaned on the fence where they had leaned, and let
the full, splendid recollection sweep across her. She knelt in
church and prayed that there would be a letter from Dean Silver,
saying that Adele was dead--

A little cottage on a river bank in Connecticut became her Heaven.
She gave it an old flag-stone walk, she sprinkled the green new
grass of an Eastern spring with daisies. She dreamed of a simple
room, where breezes and sunshine came by day, and the cool moon by
night, and where she and John laughed over their bread and cheese.

So far it was more joy than pain. But there swiftly came a time when
pain alone remained. Life became almost intolerable.

Clifford, coming duly to see her every evening, never dreamed of the
thoughts that were darkening her blue eyes. He sat in the big chair
opposite Malcolm's, and they talked about real estate, and about the
various business ventures of the village. At nine o'clock Malcolm
went stiffly upstairs, attended by Lydia, and then Martie took her
father's seat, and Clifford hitched his chair nearer.

He would ask her what she was sewing, and sometimes she laughed,
spreading the ruffle of a petticoat over her knee, and refused to
consider his questions. They talked of little things pertaining to
their engagement: Martie was sure somebody suspected it, Clifford
had been thinking of the Yellowstone for a wedding trip, and had
brought folders to study. Rarely they touched upon politics, or upon
the questions of the day.

His opinions were already stiff-jointed, those of an elderly man. He
did not believe in all this prohibition agitation, he believed that
a gentleman always knew where to stop in the matter of wine. What
right had a few temperance fanatics to vote that seven hundred acres
of his, Clifford Frost's property, should be made valueless because
they happened to be planted to grapes?

He disapproved of this agitation concerning the social evil. There
had always been women in that life, and there always would be. They
were in it because they liked it. They didn't have to choose it. Why
didn't they go into somebody's kitchen, and save money, and have
good homes, if they wanted to? He told Martie a little story that he
thought was funny of one of these women. It was the sort of story
that a man might tell the widow who was to be his wife. It made
Martie want to cry.

She had always felt herself too ignorant to form an opinion of these
things. But she found herself rapidly forming opinions now, and they
were not Clifford's opinions.

Three days after his departure, Dean Silver wrote her briefly. John
was "taking it very quietly, but didn't seem to know just what had
happened." He, Dean, hoped to get the younger man safely on board
the vessel before this mood broke. He had therefore engaged passage
on the Nippon Maru, for Thursday, four days ahead. They were all in
San Francisco, Mrs. Silver and the little girl had come down with
them, and John was interested in the steamer, and seemed perfectly
docile. He never mentioned Martie.

This letter threw her into an agony of indecision. There were a few
moments when she planned to go down to the city herself, and see
him--hear him again. Just a few minutes of John's eyes and his
voice, of the intoxication of being so passionately loved--!

She put aside this impulse, and went to write a telegram. But her
hand trembled as she did so, and her soul sickened. What could she
offer him, what but pain and fresh renunciation?

She had made many mistakes in her life. But through them all a
certain underlying principle had kept her safe. Could she fling that
all aside now; that courage that had made her, a frightened girl of
twenty, come with her unborn baby, away from the man whose marriage
to her was in question, the faith that had helped her to kneel calm
and brave beside the child who had gone?

To do that would make it all wasted and wrong. To do that would be
to lose the little she had brought from the hard years. She knew
that she would not do it. She put it all away, when the constant
thought of it arose, as weakness and madness.

Thursday came, and Martie, walking toward Sally's house, where she
and Teddy always had their Thursday supper, bought a paper, and read
that the Nippon Maru had duly sailed.

On the way she met Teddy himself--he had been to the store for Aunt
Sally--with 'Lizabeth and Billy; he was happy, chattering and
curveting about her madly in the warm twilight. He was happy here,
and safe, she told herself. And the Nippon Maru had sailed--

Sally was in her kitchen, her silky hair curled in damp rings on her
forehead. She had on her best gown, a soft blue gingham, for Sally
had just been elected to the club, and had been there this
afternoon. She had turned up the skirt of her dress, and taken off
the frilled white collar, laying it on a shelf until the dinner fuss
and hurry should be over. Mary was sitting in the high-chair, clean
and expectant, Jim was hammering nails in porch.

The children put down their bread and butter, Sally kissed her
sister. Martie began to butter swiftly, and spread it with honey.

"San Francisco paper, Mart?"

"Yes." Martie did not look up. "Mr. Dryden and Mr. Silver sailed
this morning," she said.

"Oh, really?" Sally turned a flushed face from the stove. "Lyd was
talking about him to-day, and the way he acted, carrying you off for
a walk, or something," Sally pursued cheerfully. "And until she
happened to say that his wife is living, I declare I was frightened
to death for fear he was in love with you, Mart!"

Martie stared at her in simple bewilderment. Could it be possible
that Sally had seen nothing of the fevers and heartaches of this
memorable week? Her innocent allusion to the night of their walk--
only a week ago!--brought Martie an actual pang.

For just one other such evening, for just one more talk, Martie was
beginning to feel she would go mad. They had said so little then,
they had known so little what this new separation would mean!

And Sally knew nothing of it. A sudden lonely blankness fell upon
Martie's soul; it mattered nothing to Lydia and Rose and Sally that
John Dryden loved her. It mattered more than life to her.

What use to talk of it? How flat the words would seem for that
memory of everything high and splendid. Yet she felt the need of
speech. She must talk of him to some one, now when it was too late:
when he was out on the ocean: when she was perhaps never to see him
again.

"Sis," she said, setting the filled plate in the centre of the
table, "do you specially remember him?"

Sally had chanced to come to the old home for just a minute on the
morning of her talk with John in the garden. Sally nodded now
alertly.

"Certainly I do! He seemed a dear," she said cordially.

"I wish they had not come!" Martie said sombrely.

"You--wish--?" Sally's anxious eyes flashed to her face.

"That they had never come!"

"Oh, Mart! Oh, Mart, why?"

"Because--because I think perhaps I should not marry Cliff, feeling
as I do to John!" Martie said desperately.

She had not quite meant it when she said it: her sick heart was
merely trying to reach Sally's concern, it frightened her now to
feel that it was almost true.

"WHAT!" Sally whispered.

She was roused now: too much roused. Martie began hastily to
reassure Sally, and herself, too.

"Oh, I will, Sally. Of course I will. And nobody will ever know this
except you and me!"

"Martie, dear, he DOES care then?"

"Oh, yes, he cares!"

"But, Mart--that's terrible!"

Martie laughed ruefully.

"It's miserable!" she agreed, her eyes watering even while she
smiled.

"He knew about Cliff?" Sally questioned.

"Oh, yes!"

"And his own wife is alive?"

"Oh, yes!"

"Well, then?" Sally concluded anxiously. "What does he want--what
does he expect you to do?"

To this Martie only answered unhappily:

"I don't know."

Sally, staring at her in distress, was silent. But as Martie
suddenly seemed to put the subject aside, and called the children
for supper, she turned back to the stove in relief. Presently they
were all gathered about the kitchen table, Martie encouraging the
children, as usual, to launch into the conversation, and laughing in
quite her usual merry manner at their observations. She took Mary
into her lap, ruffling the curly little head with her kisses, and
whispering endearments into the small ear. But Sally noticed that
she was not eating.

Later, when they had put away the hot, clean dishes, and made the
kitchen orderly for the night, Sally touched somewhat awkwardly upon
the delicate topic.

"Too bad--about Mr. Dryden," Sally ventured. Martie, at the open
doorway, gave no sign of hearing. Her splendid bronze head was
resting against the jamb, she was looking down the shabby little
littered backyard to the river. And suddenly it seemed to Sally that
restless, lovely Martie did not really belong to Monroe, that this
mysterious sister of hers never had belonged to Monroe, that
Martie's well-groomed hair and hands were as little in place here as
Martie's curious aloofness from the town affairs, as Martie's blue
eyes through which her hungry soul occasionally looked. "I'm awfully
sorry for him," Sally went on, a little uncertainly. "But what can
you do? He must realize--"

"He realizes nothing!" Martie said, half-smiling, half-sighing.

"He's not a Catholic, then?"

"No. He's--nothing."

"But you explained to him? And you told him about Cliff?"

"Yes; he knew about Cliff." But Martie's tone was so heavy, and the
fashion in which she raised a hand to brush the hair from her white
forehead was so suggestive of pain, that Sally felt a little tremor
of apprehension.

"Martie--you don't--CARE, too?" she asked fearfully.

"With every fibre of my soul and body!" Martie answered, in a low,
moody voice from the doorway. "Sally--Sally--Sally--to be free!" she
went on, speaking, as Sally was vaguely aware, more for the relief
of her own heart than for any effect on her sister. "To have him
free! We always liked each other--loved each other, I think. What a
life--what joy we would have! Oh, I can't bear it. I can't bear to
have the days go by, and the years go by, and never--never see him
or hear him again! I can't help Cliff; I can't help John's wife; I
can't help it if he seems odd and boyish and different to other
people--! That's what makes him John--what he is!"

"I never dreamed it," Sally marvelled.

"I never dreamed it myself, a week ago. I always had a sort of
special feeling toward John, and I knew he had toward me. But I've
been a romantic sort of fool all my life--my Prince Charming had to
come dashing up on a white horse--I didn't recognize him because he
was a little clerk in a furniture store, and married to the
stupidest woman the Lord ever made!"

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