Books: Martie The Unconquered

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"Pa," Martie said suddenly, "I wonder if you believe that!" She
stood up now, facing him, her breath coming quickly. It seemed to
Martie that she had been waiting all her life to say this: hoping
for the opportunity, years ago, dreading the necessity now. "I
wonder if you believe," she said, trembling a little, "that you--and
half the other fathers and mothers in the world--are really in the
right! I didn't ask to be born; Sally didn't ask to be born. We
didn't choose our sex. We came and we grew up, and went to school,
and we had clothing and food enough. But then--THEN!--when we must
really begin to live, you suddenly failed us. Oh, you aren't
different from other fathers, Pa. It's just that you don't
understand! What help had we then in forming human relationships?
When did you ever tell us why this young man was a possible husband,
and that one was not? I wanted to work, I wanted to be a nurse, or a
bookkeeper--you laughed at me! I had a bitter experience--an
experience that you could have spared me, and Lydia before me, if
you had cared!--and I had a girl's hell to bear; I had to go about
among my friends ASHAMED! You didn't comfort me; you didn't tell me
that if I learned a little French, and brushed up my hair, and
bought white shoes, the NEXT young man wouldn't throw me over for a
prettier and more accomplished woman! You were ashamed of me! Sally,
just as ignorant as Teddy is this minute, dashed into marriage; she
was afraid, as I was, of being a dependent old maid! She married a
good man--but that wasn't your doing! I married a bad man, a man
whose selfishness and cruelty ruined all my young days, crushed the
youth right out of me, and he might be living yet, and Teddy and I
tied to him yet but for a chance! I suffered dependence and hunger--
yes, and death, too," said Martie, crying now, "just because you
didn't give me a livelihood, just because you didn't make me, and
Sally, and Lydia, too, useful citizens! You did Len; why didn't you
give us the same chance you gave Len? Len had college; he not only
was encouraged to choose a profession, but he was MADE to! Our
profession was marriage, and we weren't even prepared for that! I
didn't know anything when I married. I didn't know whether Wallace
was fit to be a husband or a father! I didn't know how motherhood
came--all those first months were full of misgivings and doubts! I
knew I was giving him all I had, and that financially I was just
where I had been--worse off than ever, in fact, for there were the
children to think of! Why didn't I have some work to do, so that I
could have stepped into it, when bitter need came, and my children
and I were almost starving? What has Len cost you, five thousand
dollars, ten thousand? What did that statue to Grandfather Monroe
cost you? Sally and I have never cost you anything but what we ate
and wore!"

Malcolm had risen, too, and they were glaring at each other. The old
man's putty-coloured face was pale, and his eyes glittered with
fury.

"You were always a headstrong, wicked girl!" he said now, in a
toneless dry voice, hardly above a whisper. "And heartless and
wicked you will be to the end, I suppose! How dare you criticise
your father, and your sainted mother? You choose your own life; you
throw in your fortune with a ne'er-do-well, and then you come and
reproach me! Don't--don't touch me!" he added, in a sort of furious
crow, and as Martie laid a placating hand on his arm: "Don't come
near me!"

"No, don't you dare come near him!" sobbed Lydia. "Poor, dear Pa,
always so generous and so good to us! I should think you'd be
afraid, Martie--I should think you'd actually be afraid to talk so
wickedly!"

She essayed an embrace of her father, but Malcolm shook her loose,
and crossed the hall; they heard the study door slam. For a few
minutes the sisters stared at each other, then Martie went to the
side door, and called Teddy in as quiet a voice as she could
command, and Lydia vanished kitchenward, with only one scared and
reproachful look.

But the evening was not over. After Teddy was in bed, Martie,
staring at herself in the mirror, suddenly came to a new decision.
She ran down to the study, and entered informally.

"Pa!" She was on his knee, her arms about him. "I'm sorry I am such
a problem--so little a comfort!--to you. Forgive me, Pa, for I
always truly loved you--"

"If you truly want my forgiveness," he said stiffly, trying to
dislodge the clinging young arms, "you know how to deserve it--"

The old phraseology, and the old odour of teeth and skin! Martie
alone was changed.

"But forgive me, Pa, and I'll truly try never to cross you again."
Reluctantly, he conceded a response to her kiss, and she sat on the
arm of his chair, and played with the thin locks of his hair while
she completed the peace. Then she went into the kitchen, where Lydia
was sitting at the table, soaking circles of paper in brandy for the
preservation of the glasses of jelly ranged before her.

"Lyd, I just went and told Pa that I was sorry that I am such a
beast, and we've made it up--"

"I don't think you ought to talk as if it was just a quarrel," Lydia
said. "If Pa was angry with you, he had good cause--"

"Darling, I know he did! But I couldn't bear to go to sleep with ill
feeling between us, and so I came down, and apologized, and did the
whole thing handsomely--"

"You couldn't talk so lightly if you really CARED, Mart!"

"I care tremendously, Lyd. Why don't you use paraffin?"

"I know," Lydia said with interest, "Angela does. But somehow Ma
always did it this way."

"Well, I'll mark 'em for you!" Martie began to cut neat little
labels from white paper, and to write on them, "Currant Jelly with
Rasp. 1915." Presently she and Lydia were chatting pleasantly.

"I really put up too much one year," Lydia said, "and it began to
spoil, so I sent a whole box of it out to the Poor House; I don't
suppose they mind! But Mrs. Dolan there never sent my glasses back!
However, this year I'll give you some, Mart; unless Polly put some
up."

"Unless I go to New York!" Martie suggested.

Lydia's whole face darkened.

"And if I do, you and Sally will be good to Teddy?" his mother
asked, her tone suddenly faltering.

"Martie, what POSSESSES you to talk about going to New York now?"

"Oh, Lyddy, you'd never understand! It's just the longing to do
something for myself, to hold my own there, to--well, to make good!
Marrying here, and being comfortably supported here, seems like--
like failure, almost, to me! If it wasn't for Teddy, I believe that
I would have gone long ago!"

"And a selfish feeling like that is strong enough to make you
willing to break a good man's heart, and desert your child?" asked
Lydia in calm tones.

"It won't break his heart, Lyd--not nearly so much as he broke
yours, years ago! And when I can--when I could, I would send for my
boy! He'd be happier here--" Martie, rather timidly watching her
sister's face, suddenly realized the futility of this and changed
her tone. "But let's not talk about it any more to-night, Lydia,
we're both too tired and excited!"

"I don't understand you," Lydia said patiently and wearily, "I never
did. I should think that SOMETIMES you'd wonder whether you're
right, and everybody else in the world is wrong--or whether the rest
of us know SOMETHING--"

Martie generously let her have the prized last word, and went
upstairs again.

To her surprise she found Teddy awake. She sat down on the edge of
the bed, and leaned over the small figure.

"Teddy, my own boy! Haven't you been asleep?"

"Moth'," he said, with a child's uncanny prescience of impending
events, "if I were awfully, awfully bad--"

"Yes, Ted?" she encouraged him, as he paused.

"Would you ever leave me?" he asked anxiously.

The question stabbed her to the heart. She could not speak.

"I'm enough for you, aren't I?" he said eagerly. Still she did not
speak. "Or do you need somebody else?" he asked urgently.

A pang went through her heart. She tightened her arm about him.

"Teddy! You are all I have, dear!"

His small warm hand played with the ruffle of her blouse.

"But--how about Uncle Cliff, and Uncle John, and all?" he asked.
Martie was silent. "Are you going to marry them?" he added, with a
child's hesitation to say what might be ridiculous.

"No, Ted," she answered honestly.

"Well, promise me," he said urgently, sitting up to tighten his arms
about her throat, "promise me that you will never leave me! I will
never leave you, if you will promise me that! PROMISE!"

He was crying now, and Martie's own tears started thick and fast.

"I might have to leave you--just for a while--" she began.

"Not if you promised!" he said jealously.

"Even if I went away from Aunt Sally and the children, Ted, and we
had to live in a little flat again?" she stammered.

"Even THEN!" he said, with a shaken attempt at a manly voice. "I
remember the pears in the carts, and the box you dropped the train
tickets into," he said encouragingly, "and I remember Margar's
bottles that you used to let me wash! You'd take me into the parks,
and down to the beach, wouldn't you, Moth'?"

"Oh, Teddy, my little son! I'd try to make a life for you, dear!"

"And WE'D be our family, just you and me!" he said uncertainly.

"We'd be a family, all by ourselves," she promised him, laughing and
crying. And she clung to him hungrily, kissing the smooth little
forehead under the rich tumble of hair, her tears falling on his
face. Ah, this was hers, this belonged to her alone, out of all the
world. "I'm glad you told me how you felt about this, Teddy," she
said. "It makes it all clearer to me. You and I, dear--that's the
only real life for us. I owe you that. I promise you, we'll never be
separated while Mother can help it."

His wet little face was pressed against hers.

"And you'll NEVER talk about it any more!" he said violently.
"Because I cry about it sometimes, at night--"

"Never again, my own son!" He lay back on his pillow with a breath
of relief, but she kept her arms about him.

"Because you don't know how a boy feels about his own mother!" he
assured her. Kneeling there, Martie wondered how she had come to
forget his rights, forget his point of view for so long! He would
always seem a baby to her, but he was a person now, and he had his
part in, and his influence upon, her life. Suppose she had left him
to cry out this secret hunger of his uncomforted; suppose, while she
thought him contentedly playing with Billy and 'Lizabeth, he had
been judging and blaming his mother?

While she knelt, thinking, he went to sleep. But Lydia wondered what
was keeping Martie awake. The light in Martie's room was turned up,
and fell in a yellow oblong across the gravel; Lydia dozed and
awakened, but the light was always there.

Morning broke softly in a fog which did not lift as the hours went
by. Malcolm was at home until after lunch, to which meal Teddy and
Martie came downstairs unusually well dressed, Martie observing that
she had errands down town. Teddy kissed Grandpa good-bye as usual,
and his mother kissed Grandpa, too, which was not quite usual, and
clung with her white hands to his lapel.

"Teddy and I have shopping to do down town, Pa, and I've written
Cliff a note!" she said. Her father brightened.

"I'm glad you're inclined to act sensibly, my dear!" he said,
departing. "I thought we'd hear a different story this morning!"

"What are you going down town for?" asked Lydia. "I ought to have
some rubber rings from Mallon's."

"I'm taking a lot of things down--I have to pass the cleaner's
anyway," answered Martie. "I'll get them, and send them."

"Oh, bring them; they'll go in your pocket," Lydia said. "Well, Ted,
what'll you do when these measles are over, and you have to go back
to school? You've put an awful good suit on him, Mart, just to play
in."

"He'll change before he plays," Martie answered, nervously smiling.
"Come, dear!"

"Don't forget your things for the cleaner's!" Lydia said, handing
her her suitcase. Martie surprised the older sister with a sudden
kiss.

"Thanks, Lyd, dear!" she said. "Good-bye! Come, Ted!"

They went down through the quiet village, shabby after the burning
of the summer. Fog lay in wet, dark patches on the yellow grass, and
in the thinning air was the good smell of wood fires. Grapes were
piled outside the fruit stores and pasted at a slant on Bonestell's
window was a neatly printed paper slip, "Chop Suey Sundae, 15c." Up
on the brown hills the fog was rising.

They went to see Dr. Ben in his old offices opposite the Town Hall,
and he gave Teddy a pink "sucker pill," as he had given Martie years
ago.

At the grocery they met Sally, with all four children, and two small
children more, and Aunt Mart had her usual kisses. Sally was afraid
that Grace's baby boy had the measles, she confided to her sister,
and had taken the twins for a time.

"Martie, how smart you look, and Ted all dressed up!" said Sally.
"And look at my tramps in their old clothes! Mart, do go past Mason
and White's and see the linen dress patterns in the window; there's
a blue-and-tan there, and an all-white--they're too lovely!"

"Why don't you let me send you one, Sally?" Martie asked
affectionately. "I'm rich! I drew my two hundred and eleven dollars'
bank account yesterday, and cashed a check from my editor, and
Cousin Allie's wedding check!" Sally flamed into immediate protest.

"Martie, I'll be wild if you do--you mustn't! I never would have
spoken of it--"

Martie laughed as she kissed her sister, and presently Sally wheeled
Mary's carriage away. But Teddy and his mother went into Mason and
White's, nevertheless, and both the tan-and-blue and the all-white
dress were taken out of the window and duly paid for and sent away.
Teddy shouted to his mother when they were in the street again that
there was Uncle Joe in the car, and he could have taken the dresses
to Aunt Sally.

No, his mother told him, that was to be a surprise! But she crossed
the street to talk in a low tone to Uncle Joe. Uncle Joe said more
than once, "I'm with you--I think you're right!" and finally kissed
Teddy, and suddenly kissed his mother, before he drove away.

Teddy was bursting with the thought of the surprise. But this
afternoon was full of surprises. They were strolling along,
peacefully enough, when suddenly his mother took his small arm and
guided him into the station where they had arrived in Monroe nearly
two years before.

A big train came thundering to a stop now as then, and Teddy's
mother said to him quickly and urgently: "Climb in, Love. That's my
boy! Get in, dear; mother'll explain to you later!"

She took a ticket from her bag, and showed it to the coloured
porter, and they went down the little passage past the dressing
room, and came to the big velvet seats which he remembered
perfectly. His mother was breathing nervously, and she was quite
pale as she discussed the question of Teddy's berth with the man who
had letters on his cap.

She would not let Teddy look out of the windows until the train
started, but it started in perhaps two minutes, and then she took
off his hat and her own, and smoothed back his hair, and laughed
delightfully like a little girl.

"Where are we goin'?" asked Teddy, charmed and excited.

"We're going to New York, Loveliness! We're going to make a new
start!" she said.

CHAPTER VIII

From that hour Martie knew the joy of living. She emerged from the
hard school in which she had been stumbling and blundering so long;
she was a person, an individuality, she was alive and she loved
life.

Her heart fairly sang as she paid for Teddy's supper, the lovely
brown hills of California slipping past the windows of the dining
car. The waiter was solicitous; would the lady have just a salad?
No, said the lady, she did not feel hungry. She and Teddy went out
to breathe the glorious air of the mountains from the observation
car, and to flash and clatter through the snow sheds.

And what a delight it was to be young and free and to have this
splendid child all for her own, thought Martie, her heart swelling
with a wonderful peace. Everybody liked Teddy, and Teddy's touching
happiness at being alone with his adored mother opened her eyes to
the feeling that had been hidden under a child's inarticulateness
all these months.

The two hundred dollars between her and destitution might have been
two million; she was rich. She could treat the troubled, pale little
mother and the two children from the next section to lemonades every
afternoon, and when they reached Chicago, hot and sunshiny at last,
she and Teddy spent the day loitering through a big department
store. Here Teddy was given a Boy Scout suit, and Martie bought
herself a cake of perfumed soap whose odour, whenever she caught it
in after times, brought back the enchanting emotion of these first
days of independence.

Tired, dirty, they were sitting together late in the afternoon of
the fifth day, when she felt a sudden tug at her heart. Outside the
car window, slipping steadily by, were smoke-stained brick
factories, and little canals and backwaters soiled with oil and
soot, and heaps of slag and scrap iron and clinkers. Then villages
swept by--flat, orderly villages with fences enclosing summer
gardens. Then factories again--villages--factories--no more of the
flat, bare fields: the fields were all of the West.

But suddenly above this monotonous scene Martie noticed a dull glow
that grew rosier and steadier as the early evening deepened. Up
against the first early stars the lights of New York climbed in a
wide bar of pink and gold, flung a quivering bar of red.

She was back again! Back in the great city. She belonged once more
to the seething crowds in the Ghetto, to the cool arcades between
the great office buildings, to Broadway with its pushing crowds of
shoppers, to the Bronx teeming with tiny shops and swung with the
signs of a thousand apartments to let. The hotels, with their
uniformed starters, the middle Forties, with their theatrical
boarding-houses, the tiny experimental art shops and tea shops and
gift shops that continually appear and disappear among the basements
of old brown-stone houses--she was back among them all!

Tears of joy and excitement came to her eyes. She pressed her face
eagerly beside the child's face at the window.

"Look down, Ted, that's the East Side, dear, with all the children
playing; do you remember? And see all the darling awnings flapping!"

"I shouldn't wonder if we should have an electric storm!" said
Teddy, finding the old phrase easily, his warm little cheek against
hers.

"We're back in New York, Teddy! We're home again!" She was gathering
her things together. A thought smote her, and she paused with
suddenly colouring cheeks. This might so easily have been her
wedding-trip; she and Clifford might have been together now.

Poor Clifford, with his stiffly moving brain and his platitudes! She
hoped he would marry some more grateful woman some day. What a
Paradise opening for Lydia if he could ever fancy her again! Martie
spent a moment in wonder as to what the story given Monroe would be.
She had mailed a letter to Lydia, and one to Clifford, during that
last, quiet, foggy morning--letters written after the packing had
been done on that last night. She had suggested that Monroe be given
a hint that business had taken Mrs. Bannister suddenly eastward. It
would be a nine days' wonder; in six months Monroe would only
vaguely remember it. Gossips might suspect the truth: they would
never know it. Clifford himself, in another year, would be placidly
implying that there never had been anything in the rumour of an
engagement. Rose would dimple and shake her head; Martie was always
just a little ODD. Lydia would confide to Sally that she was just
sick for fear that Dryden man--and Sally, sternly inspecting Jimmy's
little back for signs of measles, would quote Joe. Joe ALWAYS
thought Martie would make good, and Joe wasn't one bit sorry she had
done as she had. Dr. Ben would defend her, too, for on that sudden
impulsive call she had let her full heart thank him for all his
fatherly goodness to her beloved Sally, and had told him what she
was doing.

"Mark ye, if you was engaged to me, ye wouldn't jump the traces like
this!" the old man had assured her.

"Dr. Ben, I wouldn't want to!" she had answered gaily. "You're older
than Cliff; I know that. But you're broad, Dr. Ben, and you're
simple, and you aren't narrow! You've grown older the way I want to,
just smiling and listening. And you know more in your little finger
than--than some people know in their whole bodies!" And she put her
arms about his neck, and gave him a daughter's laughing kiss.

"Looky here," said the old man, warming, "a man's got to be dead
before he can stand for a thing like this! You haven't got a
waiting-list, I suppose, Miss Martie?"

"No, sir!" she answered positively. "But if ever I do I'll let you
know!"

She and Teddy ate their first meal at Childs'. Little signs bearing
the single word "strawberries" were pasted on the window; Martie
felt a real thrill of affection for the place as she went in. After
a while "Old Southern Corn Cakes" would take the place of the
strawberries, and then grape-fruit "In Season Now."

"After a while we'll be too rich to come here, Ted!" she said as
they went out.

"Wull we?" Teddy asked regretfully. They went into the pushing and
crowding of the streets; heard the shrill trill of the crossing
policeman's whistle again; caught a glimpse of Broadway's lights,
fanning lower and higher, and as the big signs rippled up and down.

Martie drank it in eagerly, no faintest shadow of apprehension fell
upon this evening. She and Teddy walked to their little hotel; to-
morrow she would see her editor, and they would search for cheaper
quarters. She would get the half-promised position or another; it
mattered not which. She would board economically, or find diminutive
quarters for housekeeping; be comfortable either way. If they kept
house, some kindly old woman would be found to give Teddy bread and
butter when he came in from school. And on hot summer Sundays she
and Teddy would pack their lunch, and make an early start for the
beach; theoretically, it would be an odd life for the child, but
actually--how much richer and more sympathetic she would make it
than her own had been! Children are natural gypsies, and Teddy would
never complain because his mother kept him up later than was quite
conventional in the evening, and sometimes took him to her office,
to draw pictures or look at books for a quiet hour.

And she would have friends: women who were working like herself, and
men, too. She was as little afraid of the other as of the one now.
There would be visits to country cottages; there would be winter
dinners, down on the Square. And some day, perhaps, she would have
the studio with the bare floors and the dark rugs. Over and over
again she said the words to herself: she was free; she was free.

Dependence on Pa's whim, on Wallace's whim, was over. She stood
alone, now; she could make for herself that life that every man was
always free to make; that every woman should be offered, too. She
had suffered bitterly; she might live to be an old, old woman, but
she knew that the sight of a fluffy-headed girl baby must always
stab her with unendurable pain. She had been shabby, hungry,
ashamed, penniless, humiliated. She had been ill, physically
handicapped for weary weeks upon weeks.

And she had emerged, armed for the fight. The world needed her now,
Cliff and Pa needed her, even Dr. Ben and Sally and Len would have
been proud to offer her a home. Miss Fanny was missing her now; a
dozen persons idling into the Library in sleepy little Monroe's
summer fog, to-morrow morning, would wish that Miss David was not so
slow, would wish that Mrs. Bannister was back.

The editor himself was out of town; but his assistant was as
encouraging as a somewhat dazzled young man could be.

"She's a corker," said the assistant later. "She's pretty and she
talks fast and she's full of fun; but it's not that. She's got a
sort of PUSH to her; you'll like her. I bet she'll be just the
person. I told her that you'd be here this morning, and she said
she'd call again."

"I hope she does!" the editor said. Her card was handed him a moment
later.

In came the tall, severely gowned woman with the flashing smile and
blue eyes, and magnificent bronze hair. She radiated confidence and
power. He had hoped for something like this from her letters; she
was better than his hopes. She wanted a position. She hoped, she
said innocently, that it was a good time for positions.

It was always a good time for certain people, the editor reflected.
They talked for half an hour, irrelevant talk, Martie thought it,
for it was principally of her personal history and his own. Then a
stenographer interrupted; the little boy was afraid that his mother
had gone away through some other door!

The little boy came in, and shook hands with Mr. Trowbridge, and
subsided into his mother's lap. Then the three had another half-
hour's talk. Mr. Trowbridge had boys, too, but they were up in the
country now.

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