Books: Martie The Unconquered

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"I think he's crazy about you," said Sally.

"Oh, Sally, don't be such a fool!"

"I'm not fooling. Look at the way he turned back and walked with us,
and he never took his eyes off you!" Sally, somewhat dashed for an
instant by Martie's well-assumed scorn, gained confidence now, as
the new radiance brightened her sister's face. "Why, Mart," she said
boldly, "there is such a thing as love at first sight!"

Love at first sight! Martie felt a sort of ecstatic suffocation at
the words. An uncontrollable smile twitched at her mouth, she
recommenced her game briskly. Her heart was dancing.

"Lissun; do you suppose Ma would ever let us have a party here?"
Martie presently ventured.

Sally pursed her lips and shook a doubtful head.

"Oh, but, Sally, I don't mean a real party, of course. Just about
twenty--" Martie began.

"Lemonade and cake?" Sally supplied.

"Well--coffee and sandwiches, Rodney seemed to think. And punch."

"Punch! Martie! You know Pa never would."

"I don't see why not," Martie said discontentedly, slapping down her
cards noisily. Sally spoke only the truth, yet it was an irritating
truth, and Martie would have preferred a soothing lie.

"What about music for dancing?" Sally asked, after a thoughtful
interval.

"Angela Baxter," Martie said with reviving hope.

"But she charges two dollars; at least she did for the Baptist
euchre."

"Well--that's not so much!"

"We could make those cute brown-bread sandwiches Rose had," Sally
mused, warming to the possibility. "And use the Canton set. Nobody
in town has china like ours, anyway!"

"Oh, Sally," Martie was again fired, "we could have creamed chicken
and sandwiches--that's all anybody ever wants! And it's so much
sweller than messy sherbets and layer cake. And we could decorate
the rooms with greens--"

"Our rooms are lovely, anyway!" Sally stated with satisfaction.

"Why, with the folding doors open, and fires in both grates, they
would be perfectly stunning!" Martie spoke rapidly, her colour
rising, her blue eyes glittering like stars. "Of course, the back
room isn't furnished, but we could scatter some chairs around in
there; we'll need all the room for dancing, anyway!"

"We couldn't dance on this carpet," Sally submitted, perplexed, as
she glanced at the parlour's worn floor-covering.

"No, but we could in the back room--that floor's bare--and in the
hall," Martie answered readily. You see it's the first of a sort of
set of dances; the next would be at the Frosts' or the Barkers', and
it would mean that we were right in things--"

"Oh, it would be lovely if we could do it!" Sally agreed with a
sigh. "Play the Queen on here, Martie, and then you'll have a
space."

"Do you propose to play that game much longer, girls?" their father
asked, looking patiently over his book.

"Are we disturbing you, Pa?" Martie countered politely.

"Well--but don't stop on my account. Of course the sound of cards
and voices isn't exactly soothing. However, go on with your game--go
on with your game! If I can't stand it, I'll go back to the
library."

"Oh, no, Pa, it's too cold in there; this is the time of year you
always get that cold in your nose," Mrs. Monroe said pleadingly.

"I was going right up, anyway," Sally said with an apologetic air
and a glance toward the door.

"I'll go, too!" Martie jumbled the cards together, and rose. "It's
nearly ten, anyway."

A moment later she and Sally went out of the room together. But
while Sally went straight upstairs, to light the bedroom gas, fold
up the counterpane, and otherwise play the part of the good sister
she was, Martie noiselessly opened the side door and stepped out for
a breath of the sweet autumn night.

There was a spectacularly bright moon, somewhere; Martie could not
see it, but beyond the sunken garden she caught glimpses of silvery
brightness on the roofs of Monroe. Even here, under the dark trees,
pools of light had formed and the heavy foliage was shot with shafts
of radiance. A strong wind was clicking the eucalyptus leaves
together, and carrying bits of rubbish here and there about the
yard. Martie could hear voices, the barking of dogs, and the whine
of the ten o'clock trolley, down in the village.

The gate slammed. Leonard came in.

"Pa tell you to watch for me?" he asked fearfully.

"No." Martie, sitting on the top step and hugging her knees,
answered indifferently. "It's not ten yet. What you been doing?"

"Oh, nothing!" Len passed her and went in.

As a matter of fact, he had called for his chum, sauntered into the
candy store for caramels, joined the appreciative group that watched
a drunken man forcibly ejected from Casserley's saloon, visited the
pool room and witnessed a game or two, gone back into the street to
tease two hurrying and giggling girls with his young wit, and
drifted into a passing juggler's wretched and vulgar show. This, or
something like this, was what Len craved when he begged to "go out
for a while" after dinner. It was sometimes a little more
entertaining, sometimes less so; but it spelled life for the
seventeen-year-old boy.

He could not have described this to Martie, even had he cared to do
so. She would not have understood it. But she felt a vague yearning,
too, for lights and companionship and freedom, a vague envy of
Leonard.

The world was out there, beyond the gate, beyond the village. She
was in it, but not of it. She longed to begin to live, and knew not
how. Ten years before she had been only a busy, independent, happy
little girl; turning to her mother and sister for advice, obeying
her father without question. But Pa and Lydia, and Len with his
egotism, and Ma with her trials, were nothing to Martie now. In
battle, in pestilence, or after a great fire, she would have risen
head and shoulders above them all, would have worked gloriously to
reestablish them. She supposed that she loved them dearly. But so
terrible was the hunger of her heart for her share of life--for
loving, serving, planning, and triumphing--that she would have swept
them all aside like cobwebs to grasp the first reality flung her by
fate.

Not to stagnate, not to smother, not to fade and shrink like Lydia--
like Miss Fanny at the library, and the Baxter girls at the post-
office! Every healthy young fibre of Martie's soul and body rebelled
against such a fate, but she could not fully sense the barriers
about her, nor plan any move that should loosen her bonds. Martie
believed, as her parents believed, that life was largely a question
of "luck." Money, fame, friends, power, to this man; poverty and
obscurity and helplessness to that one. Wifehood, motherhood, honour
and delight to one school girl; gnawing, restless uselessness to the
next. "I only hope you girls are going to marry," their mother would
sometimes say plaintively; "but I declare I don't know who--with all
the nice boys leaving town the way they do! Pa gives you a good
home, but he can't do much more, and after he and I go, why, it will
be quite natural for you girls to go on keeping house for Len--I
suppose."

Martie's sensitive soul writhed under these mournful predictions.
Dependence was bitter to her, Len's kindly patronage stung her only
a little less than his occasional moods of cheerful masculine
contempt. He meant to take care of his sisters, he wasn't ever going
to marry. Pa needn't worry, Len said. The house was mortgaged,
Martie knew; their father's business growing less year by year;
there would be no great inheritance, and if life was not satisfying
now, when she had youth and plenty, what would it be when Pa was
gone?

It was all dark, confusing, baffling, to ignorant, untrained
nineteen. The sense of time passing, of opportunities unseen and
ungrasped, might well make Martie irritable, restless, and reckless.
Happiness and achievement were to be bought, but she knew not with
what coinage.

To-day the darkness had been shot by a gleam of living light.
Through Rodney Parker's casual gallantries Martie's eyes looked into
a new world. It was a world of loving, of radiant self-confidence
and self-expression. Martie saw herself buying gowns for the
wedding, whisking in and out of Monroe's shops, stopped by
affectionate and congratulatory friends. She was dining at Mrs.
Barker's, dignified, and yet gracious and responsive, too. Dear old
Judge Parker was being courteous to her; Mrs. Parker advising
Rodney's young wife. There were grandchildren running over the old
place. Martie remembered the big rooms from long-ago red-letter days
of her childhood. How she would love her home, and what a figure of
dignity and goodness Mrs. Rodney Parker would be in the life of the
town.

Oh, dear God--it was not so much to ask! People were getting married
all the time; Rodney Parker must marry some one. Lydia was unwed,
Sally had no lover; but out of so rich and full a world could not so
much be spared to Martie? Oh, how good she would be, how generous to
Pa and the girls, how kind to Ida and May!

Martie bowed her head on her knees. If this one thing might come her
way, if it might be her fate to have Rodney Parker love her, to have
the engagement and the wedding follow in their happy order, she
would never ask more of God; gaining so much she would truly be
good, she would live for others then!

When she raised her face it was wet with tears.

CHAPTER II

The next morning, when the younger girls came down to breakfast,
they found only the three women in the kitchen. An odour of coffee
hung in the air. Belle was scraping burned toast at the sink, the
flying, sooty particles clinging to wet surfaces everywhere. Lydia
sat packing cold hominy in empty baking-powder tins; to be sliced
and fried for the noon meal. Mrs. Monroe, preferring an informal
kitchen breakfast to her own society in the dining room, was
standing by the kitchen table, alternating swallows from a
saucerless cup of hot coffee with indifferent mouthfuls of buttered
cold bread. She rarely went to the trouble of toasting her own
bread, spending twice the energy required to do so in protests
against the trouble.

Lydia had breakfasted an hour ago. Sally and Martie sliced bread,
pushed forward the coffee pot, and entered a spirited claim for
cream. It was Saturday morning, when Leonard slept late. Pa was
always late. Lydia was anxious to save a generous amount of cream
for the sleepers.

"Len often takes a second cup of coffee when he's got lots of time,"
Lydia said.

"Well, I don't care!" Martie said, suddenly serious. "I'm going to
take my coffee black, anyway. I'm getting too fat!"

"Oh, Martie, you are not!" Sally laughed.

"That's foolish--you'll just upset your health!" her mother added
disapprovingly.

Martie's only answer was a buoyant kiss. She and Sally carried their
breakfast into the dining room, where they established themselves
comfortably at one end of the long table. While they ate, dipping
their toast in the coffee, buttering and rebuttering it, they
chattered as tirelessly as if they had been deprived of each other's
society and confidence for weeks.

The morning was dark and foggy, and a coal fire slumbered in the
grate, giving out a bitter, acrid smell. Against the windows the
soft mist pressed, showing a yellow patch toward the southeast,
where the sun would pierce it after a while.

Malcolm Monroe came downstairs at about nine o'clock, and the girls
gathered up their dishes and disappeared in the direction of the
kitchen. Not that Ma would not, as usual, prepare their father's
toast and bacon with her own hands, and not that Lydia would not, as
usual, serve it. The girls were not needed. But Pa always made it
impossible for them to be idle and comfortable over their own meal.
If he did not actually ask them to fetch butter or water, or if he
could find no reasonable excuse for fault-finding, he would surely
introduce some dangerous topic; lure them into admissions, stand
ready to pursue any clue. He did not like to see young girls care-
free and contented; time enough for that later on! And as years
robbed him of actual dignities, and as Monroe's estimate of him fell
lower and lower, he turned upon his daughters the authority, the
carping and controlling that might otherwise have been spent upon
respectful employees and underlings. He found some relief for a
chafed and baffled spirit in the knowledge that Sally and Martie
were helpless, were bound to obey, and could easily be made angry
and unhappy.

Lydia, her father's favourite, came in with a loaded tray, just as
Len, slipping down the back stairs, was being stealthily regaled by
his mother on a late meal in the kitchen. Len had no particular
desire for his father's undiluted company.

"Good morning, Pa!" Lydia said, with a kiss for his cool forehead.
"Your paper's right there by the fire; there's quite a fog, and it
got wet."

Hands locked, she settled herself opposite him, and revolved in her
mind the terms in which she might lay before him the younger girls'
hopes. It was part of Lydia's concientiousness not to fail them now,
even though she secretly disapproved of the whole thing.

"Pa," she began bravely, "you wouldn't mind the girls having some of
their friends in some evening, would you? I thought perhaps some
night when you were down in the city--"

"Your idea, my dear?" Malcolm said graciously.

"Well--Martie's really." Lydia was always scrupulously truthful.

His face darkened a little. He pursed his lips.

"Dinner, eh?"

"Oh, no, Pa! Just dancing, or--" Lydia was watching him closely, "or
games," she substituted hurriedly. "You see the other girls have
these little parties, and our girls--" her voice fell.

"Such an affair costs money, my dear!"

"Not much, Pa!"

His eyes were discontentedly fixed upon the headlines of his paper,
but he was thinking.

"Making a lot of work for your mother," he protested, "upsetting the
whole house like a pack of wolves! Upon my word, I can't see the
necessity. Why can't Sally and Martie--"

"But it's only once in a long while, Pa," Lydia urged.

"I know--I know! Well, you ask Martie to speak to me about it in a
day or two. Now go call your mother."

For the gracious permission Lydia gave him an appreciative kiss,
leaving him comfortable with his fire, his newspaper, and his
armchair, as she went on her errand.

"Pa was terribly sweet about the dance," she told Martie and Sally.

Belle was now deep in breakfast dishes, and the two girls had gone
out into the foggy dooryard with the chickens' breakfast. A flock of
mixed fowls were clucking and pecking over the bare ground under the
willows. Martie held the empty tin pan in one hand, in the other was
a half-eaten cruller. Sally had turned her serge skirt up over her
shoulders as a protection against the cool air, exposing a shabby
little "balmoral."

"Oh, Lyd, you're an angel!" Martie said, holding the cruller against
Lydia's mouth. But Lydia expressed a grateful negative with a shake
of her head; she never nibbled between meals.

She retailed the conversation with her father. Martie and Sally
became fired with enthusiasm as they listened. An animated
discussion followed. Grace was a problem. Dared they ignore Grace?
There was a lamentable preponderance of girls without her. All their
lists began and ended with, "Well, there's Rodney and his friends--
that's two--"

The day was as other days, except to Martie. When the chickens were
fed, she and Sally idled for perhaps half an hour in the yard, and
then went into the kitchen. Belle, sooty and untidy, had paused at
the kitchen table, with her dustpan resting three feet away from the
cold mutton that lay there. Mrs. Monroe's hair was in some disorder,
and a streak of black from the stove lay across one of her lean,
greasy wrists. The big stove was cooling now, ashes drifted from the
firebox door, and an enormous saucepan of slowly cooking beans gave
forth a fresh, unpleasant odour. At all the windows the fog pressed
softly.

"Are you going down town, Sally?" the mother asked.

"Well--I thought we would. We can if you want!" said Sally.

"If you do, I wish you'd step into Mason & White's, and ask one of
the men there if they aren't ever going to send me the rest of my
box of potatoes."

"All right!" Martie and Sally put their hats on in the downstair
hall, shouted upstairs to Lydia for the shoes, and sauntered out
contentedly into the soft, foggy morning. The Monroe girls never
heard the garden gate slam behind them without a pleasant yet
undefined sense of freedom. The sun was slowly but steadily gaining
on the fog, a bright yellow blur showed the exact spot where shining
light must soon break through. Trees along the way dripped softly,
but on the other side of the bridge, where houses were set more
closely together, and gardens less dense, sidewalks and porches were
already drying.

The girls walked past the new, trim little houses and the clumsy,
big, old-fashioned ones, chattering incessantly. Their bright,
interested eyes did not miss the tiniest detail. The village,
sleepier than ever on the morning of the half-holiday, was full of
interest to them.

Mrs. Hughie Wilson was sweeping her garden path, and called out to
them that the church concert had netted 327 dollars; wasn't that
pretty good?

A few steps farther on they met Alice Clark, who kept them ten
minutes in eager, unimportant conversation. Her parting remark sent
the Monroe girls happily on their way.

"I hear Rodney Parker's home--don't pretend to be surprised, Martha
Monroe. A little bird was telling me that I'll have to go up North
Main Street for news of him after this!"

"Who do you s'pose told her we met Rod Parker?" Martie grinned as
they went on.

"People see everything! Oh, Martie," said Sally earnestly, "I do
hope you are going to marry; no, don't laugh! I don't mean Rod, of
course, I'm not such a fool. But I mean some one."

"You ought to marry first, Sally; you're the older," Martie said,
with averted eyes and a sort of delicious shame.

"Oh, I don't mind that, Martie, if only we begin!" Sally answered
fervently. "When I think of what the next ten years MEAN for us, it
just makes me sick! Either we'll marry and have our own homes and
children, or we'll be like Alice, and the Baxters, and Miss Fanny--"

"I'd just as soon have a good job like Miss Fanny," Martie said
hardily. "She gets sixty a month."

"Well, I wouldn't!" Sally protested in a sudden burst. "Being in an
office would KILL me, I think! I just couldn't do it! But I believe
I COULD manage a little house, and children, and I'd like that! I
wouldn't mind being poor--I never really think of being anything
else--but what I'm so afraid of is that Len'll marry and we'll just
be--just be AUNTS!"

Such vehemence was not usual to Sally, and as her earnestness
brought her to a full stop on the sidewalk, the two sisters found
themselves facing each other. They burst into a joyous laugh, as
their eyes met, and the full absurdity of the conversation became
apparent.

Still giggling, they went on their way, past the old smithy, where a
pleasant breath of warmth and a splendid ringing of hammers came
from the forge, and past the new garage of raw wood with the still-
astonishing miracle of a "horseless carriage" in its big window,
pots of paint and oil standing inside its door, and workmen, behind
a barrier of barrels and planks, laying a cement sidewalk in front.
They passed the Five-and-Ten-Cent Store, its unwashed windows jammed
with pyramids of dry-looking chocolates, post cards, and jewellery,
and festoons of trashy embroidery, and the corner fruit stands
heaped with tomatoes and sprawling grapes. At the Palace Candy Store
a Japanese boy in his shirt-sleeves was washing the show window,
which was empty except for some rumpled sheets of sun-faded pink
crepe paper. By the door stood two large wooden buckets for packing
ice cream. The ice and salt were melted now, and the empty moulds,
still oozing a little curdled pink cream, were floating in the dirty
water.

"Why aren't you girls at home sewing for the poor?" demanded a
pleasant voice over their shoulders. The girls wheeled about to
smile into the eyes of Father Martin. A tall spare old man, with
enormous glasses on his twinkling blue eyes, spots and dust on his
priestly black, and a few teeth missing from his kindly, big, homely
mouth, he beamed upon them.

"Well, how are ye? And your mother's well? Well, and what are ye
buying--trousseaux?"

"We're just looking, Father," Martie giggled. "Looking for husbands
first, and then clothes!"

Laughing, the girls walked with him across the street to Mallon's
Hardware Emporium, where baskets of jelly glasses were set out on
the damp sidewalk, with enamel saucepans marked "29c." and "19c." in
black paint, carpet sweepers, oil stoves, and pink-and-blue glass
vases. They went on to the shoe shop, to the grocery, to the post-
office, past the express office, where Joe Hawkes sat whittling in
the sun. They paused to study with eager interest the flaring
posters on the fences that announced the impending arrival of
Poulson's Star Stock Company, for one night only, in "The Sword of
the King." They discovered with surprise that it was nearly twelve
o'clock, bought five cents' worth of rusty, sweet, Muscat grapes, to
be eaten on the way home, and turned their faces toward the bridge.

But the morning, for Martie, had held its golden moment. When they
passed the Bank, Sally had been dreaming, as Sally almost always
was, but Martie's eyes had gone from shining gold-lettered window to
window, and with that new, sweet suffocation at her heart she had
found the object of her searching--the satiny crest of Rodney
Parker's sleek hair, the fresh-coloured profile that had been in her
waking and sleeping thoughts since yesterday. He was evidently hard
at work; indeed he was nervous and discouraged, had Martie but known
it; he did not look up.

But Martie did not want him to look up. She wanted only the
stimulation to her thoughts that the sight of him caused, the
enchanting realization that he was there. She had a thrilling vision
of herself entering that bank, a privileged person, "young Mrs.
Rodney." Old Judge Parker coming out of his private office with his
hands full of papers would nod to her with his fatherly smile,
Rodney grin the proud yet embarrassed grin of a man confronted in
office hours by his women-folk.

Suddenly Martie decided that she would begin to save money. She and
Sally had jointly fallen heir to a young Durham cow when Cousin
Sally Buckingham died, and the cow being sold for thirty-five
dollars, exactly seventeen dollars and fifty cents had been
deposited in the bank in each girl's name. This was four years ago;
neither one ever dreamed of touching the precious nest-egg; to them
it represented wealth. Len had no bank account, nor had Mama nor
Lydia. All Martie's dreams of the future began, included, or ended
on the expenditure of this sum. It bought text books, wedding veils,
railway tickets in turn. Now she thought that if she saved another
dollar, and went into the Bank duly to deposit it, Rodney must see
her, might even wait upon her; it would be a perfectly legitimate
way of crossing his line of vision.

The Monroes had plenty of spending money; for although their father
was strongly opposed to the idea of making any child of his a
definite allowance, he allowed them to keep the change whenever they
executed small commissions for him, and to wheedle from him stray
quarter and half dollars. Lydia had only to watch for the favourable
moment to get whatever she asked, and with Leonard he was especially
generous. Martie knew that she could save, if she determined to do
so. She imagined Rodney's voice: "Bringing more money in? You'll
soon be rich at this rate, Martie!"

CHAPTER III

A few days later Rodney Parker walked home from the village with
Martie Monroe again. Meeting her in Bonestell's, he paid for her
chocolate sundae, and on their way up Main Street they stopped in
the Library, so that Miss Fanny saw them. Every one saw them: first
of all generous little Sally, who was to meet Martie in Bonestell's,
but who, perceiving that Rodney had joined her there, slipped away
unseen, and, blindly turning over the ribbons on Mason's remnant
counter, prayed with all her heart that Rodney would continue to
fill her place.

They walked up Main Street, Martie glancing up from under her shabby
hat with happy blue eyes, Rodney sauntering contentedly at her side.

How much he knew, how much he had done, the girl thought, with an
ache of hopeless admiration. Almost every sentence opened a new
vista of his experience and her ignorance. She did not suspect that
he meant it to be so; she only felt dazzled by the easy, glancing
references he made to men and books and places.

They stopped at the railroad track to watch the eastward-bound train
thunder by. Five hours out of San Francisco, its passengers looked
quite at home in the big green upholstered seats. Bored women looked
idly out upon little Monroe, half-closed magazines in their hands.
Card-playing men did not glance up as the village flashed by. On the
platform of the observation car the usual well-wrapped girl and
pipe-smoking young man were carrying on the usual flirtation. Martie
saw the train nearly every day, but never without a thrill. She said
to herself, "New York!" as a pilgrim might murmur of Mecca or of
Heaven.

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