Books: Martie The Unconquered

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"I'll go," she and Sally said together--Martie, because she was in a
particularly amiable mood; Sally, perhaps because old Mrs. Kelly was
Joe Hawkes's grandmother.

"Well, I wish you would, girls," their mother said in her gentle,
complaining voice. "She's a dear old lady--a perfect saint about
getting to church in all weathers! And while Pa doesn't care much
about having you so intimate with the Hawkeses, he was saying this
morning that Grandma Kelly is different. She was my nurse when all
four of you were born, and she certainly was interested and kind."

"We can go down about seven," Lydia said, "and not stay too long.
But I suppose 'most every one in Monroe will run in to wish her many
happy returns. Tom David's wife will come in from Westlake with
Grandma's great-grandchildren, I guess, and all the others will be
there."

"That houseful alone would kill me, let alone having the whole tribe
stream in, if _I_ were seventy-eight!" Martie observed. "But I'd
just as soon go. We'll see how we feel after dinner!"

And after dinner, the night being fresh and sweet, and the meal
early concluded because Malcolm was delayed in Pittsville and did
not return for dinner, the three Monroes pinned on their hats,
powdered their noses, and buttoned on their winter coats. Any
excitement added to her present ecstatic mood was enough to give
Martie the bloom of a wild rose, and Sally had her own reasons for
radiance. Lydia alone, walking between them, was actuated by cool
motives of duty and convention and sighed as she thought of the heat
and hubbub of the Hawkes's house, and the hour that must elapse
before they were back in the cool night again.

The Hawkeses had always lived in one house in Monroe. It was a
large, square, cheap house near the bridge, with a bare yard kept
shabby by picking chickens, and a fence of struggling pickets.
Behind the house, which had not been painted in the memory of man,
was a yawning barn which had never been painted at all. In the yard
were various odds and ends of broken machinery and old harness; a
wagon-seat, on which Grandma sometimes sat shelling beans or peeling
potatoes in the summer afternoons; old brooms, old saucepans, and
lengths of rope, clotted with mud. Fuchsia and rose-bushes
languished in a tipsy wire enclosure near the front door.

To-night, although the yard presented a rather dismal appearance in
the early winter dark, the house was bursting with hospitality and
good cheer. From every one of the bare high windows raw gushes of
light tunnelled the gloom outside, and although the cold outside had
frosted all the glass, dim forms could be seen moving about, and
voices and laughter could be heard.

Martie briskly twisted the little rotary bell-handle that was set in
the centre of the front door, and before its harsh noise had died
away, the door was flung open and the Monroe sisters were instantly
made a part of the celebration. Hilarious members of the family and
their even more hilarious friends welcomed them in; the bare hallway
was swarming with young persons of both sexes; girls were coming
down the stairs, girls going up, and the complementary boys lined
the wall, or, grinning, looked on from the doorways.

The front room on the left, usually a bedroom, was used for a
smoking room to-night; the dining-room door had been locked, but on
the right two doors gave entrance to the long parlours, and here
were older men, older women--Mrs. Hawkes, big, energetic, perspiring
all over her delighted face; Carrie David, wild with hospitable
excitement; and Joe Hawkes, Senior, a lean little eager Irishman,
quite in his glory to-night. Throned on a sort of dais, in the front
bay window, was Grandma Kelly, a little shrivelled beaming old
woman, in a crumpled, shining, black satin gown. Her hair was
scanty, showing a wide bald parting, and to hear in all the
confusion she was obliged occasionally to cup one hand behind her
ear, but her snapping eyes were as bright as a monkey's and her
lips, over toothless gums, worked constantly with a rotary motion as
she talked and laughed. On each side of her were grouped other old
ladies--Mrs. Sark, Mrs. Mulkey, Mrs. Hansen, and Mrs. Mussoo--her
friends since the days, fifty years before, when they had crossed
the plains in hooded wagons, and fought out their simple and heroic
destinies on these strange western prairies.

They had borne children, comforting and caring for each other in the
wilderness; they had talked of wolves and of Indians while trusting
little hands caught their knees and ignorant little lips pulled at
their breasts; they had known fire and flood and famine, crude
offense and cruder punishment; they had seen the Indians and the
buffalo go with the Missions and the sheep; they had followed the
gold through its sensational rise to its sensational fall, and had
held the wheat dubiously in their fingers before ever California's
dark soil knew it--had wondered whether the first apple trees really
might come to blossom and bear where the pines were cleared away.

And now, with the second and third generation, had come schools and
post-offices, cable cars and gaslight; villages were cities;
crossroads were towns. At seventy-eight, Grandma Kelly was far from
ready for her nunc dimittis. Great days had been, no doubt, but
great days were also to be. Children, grandchildren, and great-
grandchildren kept the house swarming with life, and she could never
have enough of it.

The air, never too fresh in the Hawkes's house, was hot and charged
with odours of cheap cologne, of powder, of human bodies, and of
perspiration-soaked garments. The very gaslights screamed above the
din as if they found it contagious. Large crayon portraits decorated
the walls, that of the late Mr. Kelly having attached to its frame
the sheaf of wheat that had lain on his coffin. On the walls also
were the large calendars of insurance companies, and one or two
china plaques in plush frames. A bead portiere hung between the two
parlours, constantly clicking and catching as the guests swarmed to
and fro. All the chairs in the house had been set about the walls,
and all were occupied. A disk on the phonograph was duly revolving,
in charge of a hysterical girl in blue silk and a flushed, humorous
young man, but the music was almost unheard.

Whatever their attitude toward this merrymaking had previously been,
the Monroe girls were instantly drawn into the spirit of the
occasion. Martie and Sally were dragged upstairs, where they left
hats and coats, were taken downstairs again with affectionate,
girlish arms about their waists; and found themselves laughing and
shouting with the rest. Towed through the boiling crowd to Grandma,
they kissed the cool, soft old face. They greeted the other old
women with pretty enthusiasm.

Lydia meanwhile had decorously delivered her message of good wishes
and had drifted to a chair against the wall, where matrons greeted
her eagerly and where, in her own way, she began to enjoy herself.
Sentiment, hospitality, gaiety filled the air.

"Isn't Grandma wonderful?" said all the voices, over and over. "I
think she's wonderful! Mrs. Hawkes had a dinner for just the five
old ladies, you know. Wasn't that sweet? The family had to have
their dinner earlier--just the five old ladies. Wasn't that a cute
idea? Ellen said they looked perfectly dear, all together! Mary
Clute couldn't get here from San Francisco, you know, but she sent
Grandma a tea-pot cover--the cutest thing! Did you see the Davids'
baby? It's upstairs, I guess; it's a darling little thing! Think of
it, three great-grandchildren! Oh, I do, too; I think it's a lovely
party--I think the rooms look lovely--I think it was an awfully cute
idea!"

The oldest David grandchild, becoming sodden with sleepiness,
climbed into Lydia's lap. Sally, after exchanging a conscious
undertone with young Joe, slipped through the dining-room door with
him, and happily joined the working forces in the kitchen. In her
mind Sally knew that the Hawkeses were but homely folk; she knew
that any Monroe should shrink from this hot and noisy kitchen. But
Sally's heart welcomed the eager bustle, the tasks so imperative
that her timid little entity was entirely forgotten, the talk that
was friendly and affectionate and comprehensible.

Joe and she laughed over piecing tablecloths together for the long
table, and kept a jingling ripple of laughter accompanying the
jingling of plated spoons and the thick glasses. Ellen and Grace, as
the family debutantes, were inside with the company, but Carrie and
Min, the married daughters, were here, with old Mrs. Crowley, who
never missed an occasion of this kind, Mrs. Mulkey's daughter Annie
Tate, Gertie Hansen, and an excited fringe of children too young to
dance and too old to be sent off to bed.

As it was the custom for the more intimate friends to bring a cake,
a pan of cookies, or a great jug of strong lemonade to such an
affair, there was more food than twice this surging group of men,
women, and children could possibly consume, so that the boys and
girls could keep their mouths full of oily, nutty, walnut wafers and
broken bits of layer cake without any conscientious scruples. One of
the large kitchen tables was entirely covered with plates bearing
layer cakes, with chocolate, maple, shining white, and streaky
orange icings, or topped with a deadly coating of fluffy cocoa-nut.
On the floor half a dozen ice cream freezers leaked generously; at
the sink, Mrs. Rose, who had been Minnie Hawkes, was black and
sticky to the elbows with lemon juice.

Meanwhile Martie, more in tune with the actual jollity than either
of her sisters, was warming to her most joyous mood. Her costume of
thin white waist and worn serge skirt might have been considered
deficient in a more formal assembly, but here it passed without
comment; the girls' dresses varied widely, and no one seemed any the
less gay. Grace had a long streamer of what appeared to be green
window-net tied loosely about a worn pink satin slip; Elsa Prout
wore the shepherdess costume she had made for the Elks' Hallowe'en
Dance, and Mrs. Cazley, sitting with her back against the wall, wore
her widow's bonnet with its limp little veil falling down to touch
her fresh white shirtwaist. Martie improved her own costume by
pinning a large pink tissue-paper rose against her high white stock,
and fastening another in her bronze hair; the girls laughed
appreciatively at her audacity; a vase of the paper roses had been
in the parlour for years. Youth and excitement did the rest.

Here, where her motives could not be misunderstood, where her
presence indeed was to be construed as adding distinction and
dignity to the festivities, Martie could be herself. She laughed,
she flirted with the common yet admiring boys, she paid charming
attention to the old women. A rambling musical programme was
presently set in motion; Martie's voice led all the voices. She was
presently asked to sing alone, and went through "Believe Me"
charmingly, putting real power and pathos into the immortal words.
Returning, flushed and happy in a storm of clapping, to her place
between Al Lunt and Art Carter on the sofa, she kept those
appreciative youths in such convulsions of laughter that their
entire neighbourhood was sympathetically affected. Carl Polhemus,
who played the organ at church, had begun a wandering improvisation
on the piano, evidently so taken with certain various chords and
runs that he could not resist playing them passionately over and
over. A dangerous laugh, started among the younger set, began to
strangle and stifle his audience. Martie, looking straight ahead of
her, gave only an occasional spasmodic heave of shoulders and
breast, but her lips were compressed in an agony, and her eyes full
of tears. From the writhing boys on each side of her came frequent
smothered snorts.

In upon this scene came old Dr. Ben, who had worked hand in hand
with Grandma Kelly in the darkened rooms where many of these
hilarious youngsters had drawn their first breath. Although the
infatuated musician did not stop at this interruption, many of his
listeners rose to greet the newcomer, and the tension snapped.

Dr. Ben sat down next to the old lady, and the room, from which the
older guests were quietly disappearing, was enthusiastically cleared
for dancing. The air, close already, became absolutely insufferable
now; the men's collars wilted, the girls' flushed faces streamed
perspiration. But the cool side-porch was accessible, and the
laughter and noise continued unabated.

Quietly crossing the dark backyard for his horse and buggy at ten
o'clock, Dr. Ben came upon Joe Hawkes sitting on the shadowy steps
with--he narrowed his eyes to make sure--yes, with little Sally
Monroe. The old man formed his lips into a slow, thoughtful whistle
as he busied himself with straps and buckles. Slowly, thoughtfully,
he climbed into his buggy.

"Sally!" he called, sitting irresolute with the reins in his hands.

The opaque spot that was Sally's gown did not stir in the shadows.

"Sally!" he called again. "I see ye, and Joe Hawkes, too. Come here
a minute!"

She went then, slowly into the clear November moonlight.

"What is it, Doc' Ben?" she asked, in a rather thick voice and with
a perceptible gulp. Even in this light he could see her wet lashes
glitter.

For a minute he did not speak, fat hands on fat knees. Sally,
innocent, loving, afraid, hung her head before him.

"Like Joe, do ye, Sally?" said the mild old voice.

"I--" Sally's voice was almost inaudible--"why, I don't know, Doc,
Ben," she faltered. "My mother--my father--" she stopped short.

"Your father and mother, eh?" Dr. Ben repeated musingly, as if to
himself.

"I couldn't like--any one--if it was to make all the people who love
me unhappy, I suppose," Sally said in her mild, prim voice, with an
effort at lightness. "No happiness could come of that, could it,
Doctor?"

To this dutiful expression the doctor made no immediate answer,
observing in a dissatisfied tone, after a pause: "That sounds like
your mother, or Lydia."

Sally, leaning against the shabby cushions of the carriage, looked
down in silent distress.

"There never could be anything serious between Joe Hawkes and I,"
she said presently, with a little unnatural laugh. She was not quite
sure of her pronoun. She looked anxiously at Dr. Ben's face. It was
still troubled and overcast. Sally wondered uncomfortably if he
would tell her mother that she was seeing Joe frequently. As it
chanced, she and Joe had more than once encountered the old man on
their solitary walks and talks. She thought, in her amiable heart,
that if she only knew what Dr. Ben wanted her to say she would say
it; or what viewpoint he expected her to take she would assume it.

"Joe and I were helping Mrs. David," she submitted timidly, "and we
came out to sit in the cool."

"Don't be a hypocrite, Sally," the doctor said absently. Sally
laughed with an effort to make the conversation seem all a joke, but
she was puzzled and unhappy. "Well," said the doctor suddenly,
gathering up his reins and rattling the whip in its socket as a
gentle hint to the old mare, "I must be getting on. I want you to
come and see me, Sally. Come to-morrow. I want to talk to you."

"Yes, sir," Sally answered obediently. She would have put out her
tongue for his inspection then and there if he had suggested it.

When the old phaeton had rattled out of the yard she went back to
the shadows and Joe. She was past all argument, all analysis, all
reason, now. She hungered only for this: Joe's big clean young arms
about her; Joe's fresh lips, with their ignorant passion, against
hers. For years she had known Joe only by sight; a few months ago
she had been merely amused and flattered by the boy's crudely
expressed preference; even now she knew that for a Monroe girl, at
twenty-one, to waste a thought on a Hawkes boy of nineteen was utter
madness. But a week or two ago, walking home from church with her
mother and herself on Sunday night, Joe had detained her for a
moment under the dooryard trees--had kissed her. Sally was like a
young tiger, tamed, petted, innocuous, whose puzzled lips have for
the first time tasted blood. Every fibre in her being cried for Joe,
his bashful words were her wisdom, his nearness her very breath and
being.

She clung to him now, in the dark kitchen porch, in a fever of pure
desire. Their hearts beat together. Sally's arms were bent against
the boy's big chest, as his embrace crushed her; they breathed like
runners as they kissed each other.

A moment later they went back into the kitchen to scoop the hard-
packed ice cream into variegated saucers and enjoy unashamedly such
odd bits of it as clung to fingers or spoon. The cakes had all been
cut now, enormous wedges of every separate variety were arranged on
the plates that were scattered up and down the long stretch of the
table in the dining room. The dancers and all the other guests filed
out to enjoy the supper, the room rang with laughter and screamed
witticisms. A popular feature of the entertainment was the mottoes,
flat scalloped candies of pink and white sugar, whose printed
messages caused endless merriment among these uncritical young
persons. "Do You Love Me?"; "I Am A Flirt"; "Don't Kiss Me"; "Oh,
You Smarty," said the mottoes insinuatingly, and the revellers read
them aloud, exchanged them, secreted them, and even devoured them,
in their excessive delight.

Presently they all toasted Grandma Kelly in lemonade. The old lady,
with Lydia and some of the older women, was enjoying her cake and
cream in the parlour, but tears of pride and joy came to her eyes
when the young voices all rose with lingering enjoyment on "Silver
Threads Among the Gold," and there was a general wiping of eyes at
"She's a Jolly Good Fellow" which followed it. Then some of the
girls rushed in to kiss her once more, and, as it was now nearly
twelve o'clock, Lydia called her sisters, and they said their good-
nights.

Walking home under a jaded moon, yawning and cold in the revulsion
from hours of excitement and the change from the heated rooms to the
cold night air, Lydia was complacently superior; they were certainly
warm-hearted, hospitable people, the Hawkeses, and she was glad that
they, the Monroes, had paid Grandma the compliment of going. Sally,
hanging on Lydia's arm, was silent. Martie, on her other arm, was
smilingly reminiscent. "That Al Lunt was a caution," she observed.
"Wasn't Laura Carter's dance music good? Wasn't that maple walnut
cake delicious?" She had eaten goodness knows how much ice cream,
because she sat at table between Reddy Johnson and Bernard Thomas,
and every time Carrie David or any one asked them if they wanted any
more ice cream, Bernie had put their saucers in his lap, and told
Carrie that they hadn't had any yet.

Len suddenly came up behind his sisters, frightening them with a
deep "Boo!" before he emerged from the blackness to join them.

"Javva good time?" he asked, adding carelessly, "I was there."

"Yes, you were!" Martie said incredulously. "You wish you were!"

"Honest, I was," Len said. "Honest I was, Lyd."

"Well, you weren't there until pretty late, Len," Lydia said in mild
disapproval.

"Lissun," Len suggested pleadingly. "Tell Pa I brought you girls
home from Hawkes's--go on! Lissun, Lyd, I'll do as much for you some
time--"

"Oh, Len, how can I?" Lydia objected.

"Well, I went in, honest, early in the evening," the boy asserted
eagerly. "But I can't stand those boobs and roughnecks, so I went
down town for a while. Then I came back and waited until you girls
came out of the gate. I'll cross my heart and hope to die if I
didn't!"

"If Pa asks me--" Lydia said inexorably.

For a few moments they all walked together in the dark. Then Len
said suddenly:

"Say, Mart, I saw Rod Parker to-night. He was down town, and he
asked me how my pretty sister was!"

"Did he?" Martie spoke carelessly, but her heart leaped.

"He talked a lot about you," went on Len, "he's going to call you up
in the morning about something."

"Oh--?" Martie mused. "I shouldn't wonder if it was about a dance we
were talking about," she said thoughtfully. She was quite acute
enough to see perfectly that Len was trying to enlist her silence in
his cause should their father make a general inquiry, and
philosophical enough to turn his mood to her own advantage. "Lissun,
Len," said she, "if I try to have a party you'll get the boys you
know to come, won't you? There are always too many girls, and I want
it to go off nicely. You will, won't you?"

"Sure I will," Len promised heartily. He and his sister perfectly
understood each other.

They all went quietly upstairs; Len to dreamless sleep, Sally to
thrilled memories of Joe--Joe--Joe, and Martie to shifting happy
thoughts of the evening and its little triumphs, thoughts that
always came back to Len's talk with Rodney. Rodney had asked Len for
his pretty sister.

Lydia lay wide awake for a long time. There was no doubt of it now;
she and her mother had told each other several times during the last
month or two that there was still doubt. But she was not mistaken
to-night in thinking that Len's breath was strong from something
alcoholic, that Len's eager, loose-lipped speech, his unusual
manner--She went over and over the words she would use in telling
her mother all about it in the morning. The two women would carry
heavy hearts on Len's account for the whole cold, silent day. But
they would not tell Pa--no, there was nothing sufficiently serious
as yet to tell Pa!

CHAPTER V

Martie and Sally loitered through the village, past the post-office
and the main shops and down through the poorer part of the town.
They entered a quiet region of shabby old houses, turned into a
deserted lane, and opened the picket gate before Dr. Ben's cottage.
The little house in winter stood in a network of bare vines; in
summer it was smothered in roses, and fuchsias, marguerites,
hollyhocks, and geraniums pressed against the fence. Marigolds,
alyssum, pansies, and border pinks flourished close to the ground,
with sweet William, stock, mignonette, and velvet-brown wallflowers.
Dr. Ben had planted all these himself, haphazard, and loved the
resulting untidy jumble of bloom, with the lilac blossoms rustling
overhead, birds nesting in his willow and pepper trees, and bees
buzzing and blundering over his flowers.

The house was not quite definite enough in type to be quaint; it
presented three much-ornamented gables to the lane, its windows were
narrow, shuttered inside with dark brown wood. At the back-between
the house and the little river, and shut away from the garden by a
fence--were a little barn, decorated like the house in scalloped
wood, and various small sheds and out-houses and their occupants.

Here lived the red cow, the old white mare, the chickens and
pigeons, the rabbits and bees that had made the place fascinating to
Monroe children for many years. Martie said to herself to-day that
she always felt like a child when she came to Dr. Ben's, shut once
more into childhood's world of sunshine and flowers and happy
companionship with animals and the good earth.

To-day the old man, with his setter Sandy, was busy with his
bookshelves when the girls went in. Two of the narrow low bay
windows that looked directly out on the level of the kitchen path
were in this room; the third, the girls knew, was a bedroom.
Upstairs were several unused rooms full of old furniture and piles
of magazines, and back of the long, narrow sitting room were a
little dining room with Crimson Rambler roses plastered against its
one window, and a large kitchen in which old Mis' Penny reigned
supreme.

Here in the living room were lamps, shabby chairs, an air-tight
stove, shells, empty birds' nests, specimens of ore, blown eggs,
snakeskins, moccasins, wampum, spongy dry bees' nests, Indian
baskets and rugs, ropes and pottery, an enormous Spanish hat of
yellow straw with a gaudy band, and everywhere, in disorderly
cascades and tumbled heaps, were books and pamphlets and magazines.

Dr. Ben welcomed them eagerly and sent Martie promptly to the
kitchen to interview Mis' Penny on the subject of tea. The girls
were quite at home here, for the old doctor was Rose Ransome's
mother's cousin, and through their childhood the little gabled house
had been the favourite object of their walks. Sally, alone with her
host, began to help him in his hopeless attempt to get his library
in order.

"The point is this, Sally," said Dr. Ben suddenly, after a few
innocuous comments on the weather and the health of the Monroe
family had been exchanged. "Have you and Joe Hawkes come to care for
each other?"

Sally flushed scarlet. She had been thinking hard--for Sally, who
was not given to thought--in the hours since the party for Grandma
Kelly. Now she began readily, with a great air of frankness.

"I'll tell you, Dr. Ben. I know you feel as if I was trying to hide
something from Ma and Pa, and it's worried me a good deal, too. But
the truth is, I've known Joe all my life, and he's only a boy, of
course--ever so much younger than I am--and he has just gotten this
notion into his head. Of course, it's perfectly ridiculous--because
naturally I am not going to throw my life away in any such fashion
as that! But Joe thinks now that he will never smile again--"

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