Pa says come at once told Lydia he would give you and children home as long as he lives sends his love merry Christmas darlingSALLY.
Martie went back to the kitchen, and put her head down on the little table and cried.
Wallace did not come home for Christmas Day, nor for many days. Teddy rejoiced in his coaster while his mother went soberly and swiftly about her plans. Perhaps Pa had realized that she did not actually have a cent, and was sending a check by mail. The perfect telegram would have been just a little more than perfect, if he had said so. But if he were not sending money, she must go nevertheless. She must give up this house on January tenth, landlord and grocer must trust her for the overdue rent and bill. If they would not, well, then they must have her arrested; that was all.
The fare to California would be less than two hundred dollars. She was going to borrow that from John.
Martie herself was surprised at the calm with which she came to this decision. It had all the force of finality to her. She cared for the hurt to her pride as little as she cared for what Rose Parker would think of her ignominious return, as little as she cared for what the world thought of a wife who deliberately left the father of her children to his fate.
Early in January she planned to take the children with her, and find John in his office. That very day the tickets should be bought. If Wallace cared enough for his family to come home in the meantime, she would tell him what she was doing. But Martie hoped that he would not. The one possible stumbling-block in her path would be Wallace's objection; the one thing of which she would not allow herself to think was that he MIGHT, by some hideous whim, decide to accompany them. Thinking of these things, she went about the process of house-cleaning and packing. The beds, the chairs, the china and linen and blankets must bring what they could. On the third day of the year, in his room, Martie, broom in hand, paused to study Wallace's "chestard." That must go, too. It had always been a cheaply constructed article, with one missing caster that had to be supplied by a folded wedge of paper. Still, in a consignment with other things, it would add something to the total. Martie put her hand upon it, and rocked it. As usual, the steadying wedge of paper was misplaced.
She stooped to push the prop into position again; noticed that it was a piece of notepaper, doubly folded; recognized John Dryden's handwriting—
The room whirled about her as she straightened the crumpled and discoloured sheet, and smoothed it, and grasped at one glance its contents:
DEAR MR. BANNISTER:
I am distressed to hear of Mrs. Bannister's illness, and can readily understand that she must not be burdened or troubled now. Please let me know how she progresses, and let me be your banker again, if the need arises. I am afraid she does not know how to save herself.Faithfully yours,JOHN DRYDEN.
The date was mid-December.
Martie read it once, read it again, crushed it in her hand in a spasm of shame and pain. She brought the clenched hand that held it against her heart, and shut her eyes. Oh, how could he—how could he! To John, the last refuge of her wrecked life, he had closed the way in the very hour of escape!
For a long time she stood, leaning against the tipped chest, blind and deaf to everything but her whirling thoughts. After a while she looked apathetically at the clock; time for Margar's toast and boiled egg. She must finish in here; the baby would be waking.
Somehow she got through the cold, silent afternoon. She felt as if she were bleeding internally; as if the crimson stain from her shaken heart might ooze through her faded gingham. She must get the children into the fresh air before the snow fell.
Out of doors a silence reigned. A steady, cold wind, tasting already of snow, was blowing. The streets were almost deserted. Martie pushed the carriage briskly, and the sharp air brought colour to her cheeks, and a sort of desperate philosophy to her thoughts. Waiting for the prescription for Margar's croup, with the baby in her lap, Martie saw herself in a long mirror. The blooming young mother, the rosy, lovely children, could not but make a heartening picture. Margar's little gaitered legs, her bright face under the shabby, fur-rimmed cap; Teddy's sturdy straight little shoulders and his dark blue, intelligent eyes; these were Martie's riches. Were not comfort and surety well lost for them at twenty-seven? At thirty-seven, at forty-seven, there would be a different reckoning.
No woman's life was affected, surely, by a trifle like the tourist fare to California, she told herself sensibly. If the money was not to come from John, it must be forthcoming in some other way, if not this month, then next month, or the next still. Perhaps she would still go to John, and tell him the whole story.
Pondering, planning, she went back to the house, her spirits sinking as the warm air smote her, the odour of close rooms, and of the soaking little garments in the kitchen tub. Wallace had come in, had flung himself across his bed, and was asleep.
Martie merely glanced at him before she set about the daily routine of undressing the baby, setting the table, getting a simple supper for Teddy and herself. No matter! It was only a question of a little time, now. In ten days, in two weeks, she would be on the train; the new fortune hazarded. The snoring sleeper little dreamed that some of her things were packed, some of the children's things packed, that Margar's best coat had been sent to the laundry, with the Western trip in view; that a furniture man had been interviewed as to the disposal of the chairs and tables.
At six o'clock Margar, with her bottle, was tucked away in the front room, and Martie and Teddy sat down to their meal. Roused perhaps by the clatter of dishes, Wallace came from the bedroom to the kitchen door, and stood looking in.
"Wallace," Martie said without preamble, "why did you never tell me that you borrowed money from Mr. Dryden?"
He stared at her stupidly, still sleepy, and taken unawares.
"He told you, huh?" he said heavily, after a pause.
"I found his note!" Martie said, beginning to breathe quickly.
Without glancing at Wallace, she put a buttered slice of bread before Teddy.
"I didn't want to distress you with it, Mart," Wallace said weakly.
"Distress me!" his wife echoed with a bitter laugh.
"Of course, some of it is paid back," Wallace added unconvincingly. Martie shot him a quick, distrustful glance. Ah, if she could believe him! "I have his note acknowledging half of it, seventy-five," added Wallace more confidently. "I'll show it to you!"
"I wish you would!" Martie said in cold incredulity. Teddy, deceived by his mother's dispassionate tone, gave Wallace a warm little smile, embellished by bread and milk.
"I guess you've been wondering where I was?" ventured Wallace, rubbing one big bare foot with the other, and hunching his shoulders in his disreputable wrapper. Unshaven, unbrushed, he gave a luxurious yawn.
"No matter!" Martie said, shrugging. She poured her tea, noticed that her fingernails were neglected, and sighed.
"I don't see why you take that attitude, Mart," Wallace said mildly, sitting down. "In the first place, I sent you a letter day before yesterday, which Thompson didn't mail—"
"Really!" said Martie, the seething bitterness within her making hand and voice tremble.
"I have the deuce of a cold!" Wallace suggested tentatively. His wife did not comment, or show in any way that she had heard him. "I know what you think I've been doing," he went on. "But for once, you're wrong. A lot of us have just been down at Joe's in the country. His wife's away, and we just cooked and walked and played cards—and I sat in luck, too!" He opened the wallet he held in his hands, showing a little roll of dirty bills, and Martie was ashamed of the instant softening of her heart. She wanted money so badly! "I was coming home Monday," pursued Wallace, conscious that he was gaining ground, "but this damn cold hit me, and the boys made me stay in bed."
"Will you have some tea?" Martie asked reluctantly. He responded instantly to her softened tone.
"I WOULD like some tea. I've been feeling rotten! And say, Mart," he had drawn up to the table now, and had one wrappered arm about Teddy, "say, Mart," he said eagerly, "listen! This'll interest you. Thompson's brother-in-law, Bill Buffington, was there; he's an awfully nice fellow; he's got coffee interests in Costa Rica. We talked a lot, we hit it off awfully well, and he thinks there's a dandy chance for me down there! He says he could get me twenty jobs, and he wants me to go back when he goes—"
"But, Wallace—" Martie's quick enthusiasm was firing. "But what about the children?"
"Why, they'd come along. Buff says piles of Americans down there have children, you just have to dress 'em light—"
"And feed them light; that's the most important!" Martie added eagerly.
"Sure. And I get my transportation, and you only half fare, so you see there's not much to that!"
"Wallace!" The world was changing. "And what would you do?"
"Checking cargoes, and managing things generally. We get a house, and he says the place is alive with servants. And he asked if you were the sort of woman who would take in a few boarders; he says the men there are crazy for American cooking, and that you could have all you'd take—"
"Oh, I would!" Martie said excitedly. "I'd have nothing else to do, you know! Oh, Wallie, I am delighted about this! I am so sick of this city!" she added, smiling tremulously. "I am so sick of cold and dirt and worry!"
"Well," he smiled a little shamefacedly, "one thing you'll like. No booze down there. Buff says there's nothing in it; it can't be done. He says that's the quickest way for a man to FINISH himself!"
The kitchen had been brightening for Martie with the swift changes of a stage sunrise. Now the colour came to her face, and the happy tears to her eyes. For the first time in many months she went into her husband's arms, and put her own arms about his neck, and her cheek against his, in the happy fashion of years ago.
"Oh, Wallie, dear! We'll begin all over again. We'll get away, on the steamer, and make a home and a life for ourselves!"
"Don't you WANT to go, Moth'?" Teddy asked anxiously. Martie laughed as she wiped her eyes.
"Crying for joy, Ted," she told him. "Don't sit there sneezing, Wallie," she added in her ordinary tone. Her husband asked her, dutifully, if she would object to his mixing a hot whisky lemonade for his cold. After a second's hesitation she said no, and it was mixed, and shortly afterward Wallace went to bed and to sleep. At eight Martie tucked Teddy into bed, straightening the clothes over Margar before she went into the dining room for an hour of solitaire.
"Mrs. Bannister's Boarding House"; she liked the sound. The men would tell each other that it was luck to get into Mrs. Bannister's. White shoes—thin white gowns—she must be businesslike—bills and receipts—and terms dignified, but not exorbitant—when Ted was old enough for boarding-school—say twelve—but of course they could tell better about that later on!
A little sound from the front bedroom brought her to her feet, fright clutching her heart. Margar was croupy again!
It was a sufficiently familiar emergency, but Martie never grew used to it. She ran to the child's side, catching up the new bottle of medicine. A hideous paroxysm subsided as she took the baby in her arms, but Margar sank back so heavily exhausted that no coaxing persuaded her to open her eyes, or to do more than reject with fretful little lips the medicine spoon. She is very ill—Martie said to herself fearfully. She flew to her husband's side.
"Wallie—I hate to wake you! But Margar is croupy, and I'm going to run for Dr. Converse. Light the croup kettle, will you, I won't be a moment!"
His daughter was the core of Wallace's heart. He was instantly alert.
"Here, let me go, Mart! I'll get something on—"
"No, no, I'm dressed! But look at her, Wallie," Martie said, as they came together to stand by the crib. "I don't like the way she's breathing—"
She looked eagerly at his face, but saw only her own disquiet reflected there.
"Get the doctor," he said, tucking the blankets about the shabby little double-gown. "I'll keep her warm—"
A moment later Martie, buttoned into her old squirrel-lined coat, was in the quiet, deserted street, which was being muffled deeper and deeper in the softly falling snow. Steps, areas, fences, were alike furred in soft white, old gratings wore an exquisite coating over their dingy filigree. The snow was coming down evenly, untouched by wind, the flakes twisting like long ropes against the street lights. A gang of men were talking and clanking shovels on the car tracks; an ambulance thudded by, the wheels grating and slipping on the snow.
Dr. and Mrs. Converse were in their dining room, a pleasant, shabby room smelling of musk, and with an old oil painting of fruit, a cut watermelon, peaches and grapes, a fringed napkin and a glass of red wine, over the curved black marble mantel. The old man was enjoying a late supper, but struggled into his great coat cheerfully enough. Mrs. Converse tried to persuade Martie to have just a sip of sherry, but Martie was frantic to be gone. In a moment she and the old man were on their way, through the silent, falling snow again, and in her own hallway, and she was crying to Wallace: "How is she?"
The room was steamy with the fumes of the croup kettle; Wallace, the child in his arms, met them with a face of terror. Both men bent over the baby.
"She seems all right again now," said Wallace in a sharp whisper, "but right after you left—my God, I thought she would choke!"
Martie watched the doctor's face, amazement and fright paralyzing every sense but sight. The old man's tender, clever hands rested for a moment on the little double-gown.
"Well, poor little girl!" he said, softly, after a moment of pulsing silence. He straightened up, and looked at Martie. "Gone," he said simply. "She died in her father's arms."
"Gone!" Martie echoed. The quiet word fell into a void of silence. Father and mother stood transfixed, looking upon each other. Martie was panting like a runner, Wallace seemed dazed. They stood so a long time.
Relief came first to Wallace; for as they laid the tiny form on the bed, and arranged the shabby little gown about it, he suddenly fell upon his knees, and flung one arm about his child and burst into bitter crying. But Martie moved about, mute, unhearing, her mouth fallen a little open, her breath still coming hard. She answered the doctor's suggestions only after a moment's frowning concentration—what did he say?
After a while he was gone, and Wallace was persuaded to go to bed again, Teddy tucked in beside him. Then Martie lowered the light in what had been the children's room, and knelt beside her dead.
The snow was still falling with a gentle, ticking sound against the window. Muffled whistles sounded on the river; the night was so stilled that the clanking of shovels and the noise of voices came clearly from the car-tracks at the corner.
Hour after hour went by. Martie knelt on; she was not conscious of grief or pain; she was not conscious of the world that would wake in the morning, and go about its business, and of the bright sun that would blaze out upon the snow. There was no world, no sun, no protest, and no hope. There was only the question: Why?
In the soft flicker of the gaslight Margar lay in unearthly beauty, the shadow of her dark eyelashes touching her cheek, a smile lingering on her baby mouth. She had been such a happy baby; Martie had loved to rumple and kiss the aureole of bright hair that framed the sleeping face.
The old double-gown—with the middle button that did not match—Martie had ironed only yesterday. She would not iron it again. The rag doll, and the strings of spools, and the shabby high-chair where Margar sat curling her little bare toes on summer mornings; these must vanish. The little feet were still. Gone!
Gone, in an hour, all the dreaming and hoping. No Margar in a cleaned coat would run about the decks of the steamer—
Martie pressed her hand over her dry and burning eyes. She wondered that she could think of these things and not go mad.
The days went by; time did not stop. Wallace remained ill; Teddy had a cold, too. Mrs. Converse and John and Adele were there, all sympathetic, all helpful. They were telling Martie that she must keep up for the others. She must drink this; she must lie down.
Presently the front room, so terribly occupied, was more terribly empty. Little Margaret Bannister was laid beside little Mary and Rose and Paul Converse at Mount Kisco. Children, many of them, died thus every year, and life went on. Martie had the perfect memory, and the memory of Adele's tears, of Mrs. Converse's tears, of John's agony of sympathy.
Then they all went out of her life as suddenly as they had entered it. Only the old doctor came steadily, because of Teddy's cold and Wallace's cold. Martie worked over their trays, read fairy-tales to Teddy, read the newspaper to Wallace, said that she felt well, she HAD eaten a good lunch, she WAS sleeping well.
When the first suspicion of Wallace's condition came to her she was standing in the kitchen, waiting for a kettle to boil, and staring dully out into a world of frozen bareness. Margaret had been with her a week ago; a week ago it had been her privilege to catch the warm little form to her heart, to kiss the aureole of gold, to listen to the shaken gurgle of baby laughter—
The doctor came out from Wallace's room; Martie, still wrapped in her thoughts, listened to him absently.... pneumonia. Suddenly she came to herself with a shock, repeating the word. Pneumonia? What was he saying? But, Doctor—but Doctor—is Mr. Bannister so ill?
He was very ill; gravely ill. The fact that taken in time, and fought with every weapon, the disease had gained, augured badly. Martie listened in stupefaction.
She suggested a nurse. The old doctor smiled at her affectionately. Perhaps to-morrow, if he was no better, they might consider it. Meanwhile, he was in excellent hands.
A strange, silent day followed. Martie looked at her husband now with that augmented concern that such a warning brings. He slept, waked, smiled at her, was not hungry. His big hand, when she touched it, was hot. Teddy, coughing, and with oil-saturated flannel over his chest, played with his blocks and listened to fairy-tales. Outside, a bitter cold wind swept the empty streets. Her husband ill, perhaps dying, Margar gone; it was all unreal and unconvincing.
At four o'clock the doctor came back, and at five the nurse pleasantly took possession of the sick room. She was a sensible New England woman, who cooked potatoes in an amazing way for Teddy's supper, and taught Martie a new solitaire in the still watches of the night. Martie was anxious to make her comfortable; she must lie down; and she must be sure to get out into the fresh air to-morrow afternoon.
But Miss Swann did not leave her case the next day, a Sunday, and Martie, awed and silent, spent the day beside the bed. Wallace died at five o'clock.
He wandered in a light fever that morning, and at two o'clock fell into the stupor that was not to end in this world. But Martie had, to treasure, the memory of the early morning when she slipped quietly into the room that was orderly, dimly lighted, and odorous of drugs now. He was awake then, his eyes found her, and he smiled as she knelt beside him.
"Better?" she said softly.
The big head nodded almost imperceptibly. He moistened his lips.
"I'm all right," he said voicelessly. "Bad—bad cold!"
He shut his eyes, and with them shut, added in a whisper: "Sweet, sweet woman, Martie! Remember that day—in Pittsville—when you had on—your brother's—coat? Mabel—and old Jesse—!"
Heavenly tears rushed to her eyes; she felt the yielding of her frozen heart. She caught his hand to her lips, bowing her face over it.
"Ah, Wallace dear! We were happy then! We'll go back—back to that time—and we'll start fresh!"
A long silence. Then he opened his eyes, found her, with a start, as if he had not been quite sure what those opening eyes would see, and smiled sleepily.
"I'll make it—up to you, Martie!" he said heavily She had her arms about him as he sank into unnatural sleep. At eight, whispering in the kitchen with John, who had come for Teddy, she said that Wallie was better; and busy with coffee and toast for Miss Swann, she began to plan for Costa Rica. Beaten, crushed, purified by fire, healed by tears, she was ready for life again.
But that was not to be. Wallace was dead, and those who gathered about Martie wondered that she wept for her husband more than for her child.
Wept for the wasted life, perhaps, and for the needless suffering and sorrow. But even in the first hours of her widowhood Martie's heart knew a deep and passionate relief. Vague and menacing as was the future, stretching before her, she knew that she would never wish Wallace back.
There were times when Martie found it difficult to believe that she had ever been away from Monroe at all; evenings, when she and Lydia sat talking in the shabby sitting room of the old house; or mornings when she fed the chickens in the soft fog under the willow trees of the yard. Len and Sally were married and gone, dear Ma was gone, and Belle had married, too; a tall gaunt woman called Pauline was in her place.
But these things might all have transpired without touching Martie's own life directly. She might still, in many ways, have been the dreaming, ambitious, helpless girl of seven years ago. Sometimes the realization of all she had endured came to her with an odd sense of shock. She would glance down at her thin hand, in its black cuff, and fall into deep musing, her face grave and weary. Or she would call Teddy from his play, and hold his warm little body close, staring at him with a look that always made the child uneasy. Third Avenue, barred with sun and shade, in the early summer mornings; Broadway on a snowy winter afternoon with the theatre crowd streaming up and down, spring and babies taking possession of the parks—were these all a dream?
No; she had gained something in the hard years; she saw that more and more. Her very widowhood to Monroe had the stamp of absolute respectability. Even Pa was changed toward her; or was it that she was changed toward him? However caused, in their relationship there was a fundamental change.
Pa had been a figure of power and tyranny seven years ago. Now he seemed to Martie only an unreasonable, unattractive old man, thwarted in his old age in everything his heart desired. Lydia was still tremblingly filial in her attitude toward Pa, but Martie at once assumed the maternal. She scolded him, listened to him, and dictated to him, and he liked it. Martie had never loved him as Lydia did; she had defied and disobeyed and deserted him, yet he transferred his allegiance to her now, and clung to her helplessly.
He liked to have her walk down to his office beside him in the mornings, in her plain black. While they walked he pointed out various pieces of property, and told her how cheaply they had been sold forty years ago. The whole post-office block had gone for seven hundred dollars, the hotel site had been Mason's cow-yard! Old man Sark had lived there, and had refused to put black on his house when Lincoln was assassinated.
"And didn't he go to jail for that, Pa?"
"Yes, ma'am, he did!"
"But YOU—"
"I was in jail, too." Malcolm Monroe would chuckle under his now gray moustache that was yellowed with tobacco stains. "Yes, sir, I rounded up some of the boys, the Twentyonesters, we called ourselves, and we led a riot 'round this town! The ringleaders were arrested, but that was merely a form—merely a form!"
"You must have been a terror, Pa."
"Well—well, I had a good deal of your grandmother's spirit! And I suppose they rather looked to me to set the pace—"
Smiling, they would go along in the sunlight, past the little homes where babies had been turned out into grassy yards, past the straggling stables and the smithy, and the fire-house, and the office of the weekly Zeus. There was more than one garage in Monroe now and the squared noses of Ford cars were at home everywhere. Mallon's Hardware Emporium, the Five-and-Ten-Cent Store, still with its pillars of twisted handkerchiefs, Mason and White's—how familiar they were! And the old Bank, with its wide windows and double roller shades was familiar, too. Martie learned that the Bank had duly worn black a year or two ago for kindly old Colonel Frost; his name had been obliterated from the big window, and Clifford Frost was vice-president now.
"One death is two deaths, they say," Lydia had sighed, telling Martie of the Colonel's death. "You know Cliff's wife died only two months before his father did. That was a terrible thing! Her little girl was seven years old, and she was going to have another—"
When Martie, in the early afternoon of a warm sweet day on mid-February, had stepped from the train, with Teddy's little fingers held tight in hers, Sally's face, running over with tears and smiles, had been the first she found. Curiously changed, yet wonderfully familiar, the sisters had clung together, hardly knowing how to begin their friendship again after six long years. There were big things to say, but they said the little things. They talked about the trip and the warm weather that had brought the buttercups so soon, and the case that had kept Pa on jury duty in Pittsville.
Len—rather pompous, and with a moustache!—explained why his wife could not be there: the two-year-old daughter was not very well. Martie questioned him eagerly of his two children. Both girls, Len said gloomily; he asked his sister if she realized that there was not a Monroe yet.
Lydia wept a few tears; "Martie, dear, to see you in black!" and Martie's eyes watered, and her lip shook.
"Grace and all the others would have come," Sally said quickly, "but we knew you'd be tired, and then it's homecoming, Martie, and you'll have lots of time to see us all!"
She introduced Elizabeth, a lovely, fly-away child with bright loose hair, and Billy, a freckled, ordinary-looking boy, who gave his aunt a beautiful smile from large, dark eyes. The others were left with "Mother"—Joe's mother.
"But, Sally, you're so fat!"
"And, Mart, you're so thin!"
"Never mind; it's becoming to you, Sally. You look still like a little girl. Really, you do! And how's Joe?"
"Oh, Joe's lovely. I went down and spent a week with him. I had the choice of that or a spring suit, and I took that!"
"Went—but where is he? I suppose he hasn't been sent to San Quentin?"
"Oh, Martie, don't! You know Russell Harrison, 'Dutch's' cousin, that used to play with Len, really WAS sent there!"
"For Heaven's sake, what for?"
"Well, Hugh Wilson had some trouble with Paul King, and—it was about money—and Russell Harrison went to Hughie and told him—"
So the conversation was diverted over and over again; and the inessential things were said, and the important ones forgotten. Len had borrowed the firm's motor car, and they all got in. Martie, used to Wallace's careless magnificence, was accustomed enough to this mode of travel, but she saw that it was a cause of great excitement to the children, and even to Sally.
"You say the 'firm,' Len—I'll never get used to my little brother with a moustache! What do you mean by the 'firm?'" asked Martie. "My goodness—goodness—goodness, there's the Library and Lacey's!" she added, her eyes eagerly roving the streets.
"Miss Fanny is still there; she always speaks so affectionately of you, Martie," said Lydia eagerly and tremulously. Martie perceived that in some mysterious way Lydia was ill at ease. Lydia did not quite know how to deal with a younger sister who was yet a widow, and had lived in New York.
"There was an awful lot of talk about getting her out of the Library," contributed Sally; "they said the Streets were at the back of it; they wanted to put a man in! There was the greatest excitement; we all went down to the Town Hall and listened to the speeches—it was terrific! I guess the Streets and their crowd felt pretty small, because they got—what was it, Len?"
"Seventeen votes out of one hundred and eleven!" Len said, not moving his eyes from the road before him.
"My house is right down there, next door to Uncle Ben's," said Sally, craning her neck suddenly. "You can't see it, but no matter; there's lots of time! Here's the Hawkes's place; remember that?"
"I remember everything," Martie said, smiling. "We're nearly home!"
The old Monroe house looked shabby, even in the spring green. Martie had seen the deeper, fresher green of the East for six successive springs. The eucalyptus trees wore their tassels, the willows' fresh foliage had sprung over the old rusty leaves. A raw gateway had been cut, out by the old barn, into Clipper Lane, and a driveway filled in. Tired, confused, train-sick, Martie got down into the old yard, and the old atmosphere enveloped her like a garment. The fuchsia bushes, the marguerites so green on top, so brown and dry under their crown of fresh life, the heliotrope sprawling against the peeling boards under the dining-room windows, and tacked in place with strips of kid glove—how well she knew them!
They went in the side door, and through the dark dining room, odorous of vegetable soup and bread and butter. An unearthly quiet held the house. Pa's door was closed; Martie imagined the room darker and more grim than ever.
Lydia had given her her old room; the room in which she and Sally had grown to womanhood. It was as clean and bare as a hotel room. Lydia and Sally had discussed the advisability of a bowl of flowers, but had decided flowers might remind poor Mart of funerals. Martie remembered the counterpane on the bed and the limp madras curtains at the windows. She put her gloves in a bureau drawer lined with folded newspaper, and hung her wraps in the square closet that was, for some unimaginable reason, a step higher than the room.
Lydia sat on the bed, and Sally on a chair, while Martie slowly moved about her new domain. The children had gone into the yard, 'Lizabeth and Billy charged not to let their little cousin get his clothes dirty; when the trunks came, with his overalls, he could get as dirty as he pleased.
The soiled, tumbled contents of the hand bag, after the five days' trip, filled Martie with a sort of weary concern. She stood, puzzling vaguely over the damp washcloth that was wrapped about a cake of soap, the magazines of which she had grown so tired, the rumpled night-wear.
"I suppose I should hang these up; we may not get the trunks to-night."
"Oh, you will!" Lydia reassured her. A certain blankness fell on them all. It was the glaring spring hour of four o'clock; not lunch time, nor dinner time, nor bed time, nor time to go to market. Suddenly a tear fell on Martie's hand; she sniffed.
"Ah, don't, Mart!" Lydia said, fumbling for her own handkerchief. "We know—we know how hard it is! Your husband, and Ma not here to welcome you—"
The sisters cried together.
But she slept well in the old walnut bed, and enjoyed a delicious, unfamiliar leisure the next morning, when Teddy was turned out to the safety of the yard, and Pa, after paternally reassuring her as to her welcome and pompously reiterating that her old father's home was hers for the rest of her life, was gone. She and Lydia talked deeply over the breakfast table, while Pauline rattled dishes in the kitchen and a soft fog pressed against the windows.
Martie had said that she was going over to Sally's immediately after breakfast, but, in the old way, time drifted by. She went upstairs to make her bed, and she and Lydia talked again, from doorway to doorway. When they were finally dressed to walk down town, Lydia said that she might as well go to market first; they could stop at Sally's afterward.
Teddy galloped and curveted about them; Monroe enchanted Teddy. The sunshine was just pushing back the fog, and the low hills all about the town were coming into view, when Martie took her son in to meet Miss Fanny.
Grayer and thinner, the librarian was otherwise unchanged. The old strong, coarse voice, the old plain dress, serviceable and comfortable, the old delighted affection. Miss Fanny wore glasses now; she beamed upon Teddy as she put them on, after frankly wiping her eyes.
She made a little fuss about Martie's joining the Library, so that Teddy could take home "Davy and the Goblin."
They went out into the warming, drying Main Street again; everywhere Martie was welcomed. In the shops and on the street humble old friends eyed her black respectfully.
The nervousness that she had felt about coming back began to melt like the mist itself. She had dreaded Monroe's old standards, dreaded Rose and Len, and the effect her poverty must have on them. Now she began to see that Rose mattered as little here as she had mattered when Martie was struggling in East Twenty-sixth Street. Rose "went" with the Frosts and the Streets and the Pattersons now. Her intimate friend was Dr. Ellis's wife, a girl from San Francisco.
"Shall we go in for a minute, and make a little visit?" said Lydia, as she had said years ago, whenever they passed the church. Martie nodded. They creaked into the barnlike shabbiness of the edifice; the little red light twinkled silently before the altar. Clara Baxter was tiptoeing to and fro with vases. Teddy twisted and turned, had to be bumped to his knees, was warned in a whisper that he must not talk.
Father Martin was not well; he had an assistant, Lydia said. The bishop wanted to establish a convent here, and old Mrs. Hanson had left eleven hundred dollars for it. Gertie Hanson lived in Fruitvale; she was married to a widower. She had threatened to fight the will, but people said that she got quite a lot of money; the Hansons were richer than any one thought. Anyway, she had not put up a gravestone to her mother yet, and Alice Clark said that Gertie had said that she couldn't afford it.
"Why, that house must have been worth something!" Martie commented, picking up the threads with interest.
"Well, wouldn't you think so!" Lydia said eagerly.
The morning had been so wasted that Sally was in a whirl of dinner-getting when they reached her house. She had her hearty meal at noon on the children's account; her little kitchen was filled with smoke and noise. To-day she had masses of rather dark, mushy boiled rice, stewed neck of lamb, apples, and hot biscuits. Martie, fresh from New York's campaign of dietetic education, reflected that it was rather unusual fare for small children, but Sally's quartette was healthy-looking enough, and full of life and excitement. 'Lizabeth set the table; there was great running about, and dragging of chairs.
Martie studied her sister with amused admiration. There was small room for maternal vapours in Sally's busy life. Her matter-of-fact voice ruled the confusion.
"Jim, you do as 'Lizabeth tells you, or you'll get another whipping, sir! Pour that milk into the pitcher, Brother. Put on both sugar bowls, darling; Brother likes the brown. Martie, dearest, I am ashamed of this muss, but in two minutes I'll have them all started—there's baby—'Lizabeth, there's baby; you'll have to go up—"
"I'll go up!" Lydia and Martie said together. Martie went through the bare little hallways upstairs, and peeped into shabby bedrooms full of small beds and dangling nightgowns and broken toys.
Mary was sitting up in her crib, tumbled, red-cheeked, tears hanging on her lashes. The room was darkened for her nap; she wore a worn little discoloured wrapper; she clung to her rag doll. Martie, with deathly weakness sweeping over her, smiled, and spoke to her. The baby eyed her curiously, but she was not afraid. Martie picked her up, and stood there holding her, while the knife turned and twisted in her heart.
After a while she wrapped a blanket about Mary, and carried her downstairs. Sally saw that Martie's face was ashen, and she knew why. Lydia saw nothing. Lydia would have said that Martie had placed poor Wallace's picture on her bureau that morning, and had talked about him, calmly and dry-eyed; so why should she feel so much more for her baby? Teddy had been a little strange, if eagerly friendly, with his other cousins; but he knew how to treat Mary. He picked up the things she threw down from her high-chair, and tickled her, and made her laugh.
"If this elaborate and formal meal is dinner, Sally dear, what is supper?"
"Oh, Martie, it's so delicious to hear you again! Why, supper will be apple sauce and bread and butter and milk, and gingerbread and cookies. It's the same the year round! I like it, really; after we go up to Pa's to supper the children don't sleep well, and neither do I."
"You haven't told me yet where Joe is."
"Oh, I know, and I WILL! We get talking, and somehow there's so much to say. Why, Joe's finishing his course at Cooper's College in San Francisco; he'll graduate this May. Dr. J. F. Hawkes; isn't that fun!"
"A regular doctor!" Martie exclaimed. "But—but is he going to BE one?"
"BE one! I should think he is!" Sally announced proudly. "Uncle Ben says he's a born doctor—"
"And how long has it been UNCLE Ben?"
"Oh, 'Lizabeth adopted him. He adores the children."
"He loaned Joe the money," Lydia said with her old air of delicately emphasizing an unsavoury truth.
Sally gave her younger sister a rather odd look at this, but she did not deny the statement.
"And who keeps the quartette going?" asked Martie, glancing about.
"Joe's people; and Pa does send barrels of apples and things, doesn't he, Sally?" Lydia supplied.
"Oh, yes; we only pay twelve dollars rent, and we live very cheaply!" Sally said cheerfully, with another mysterious look.
A day or two later, when they were alone, she told Martie the whole truth.
"It's Uncle Ben, of course, Mart; you remember his old offer, if ever I had any children? He pays me twelve hundred a year for my four. Nobody knows it, not even Lyd. People would only talk, you know, and it's none of their affair. It's his fad, you know. We married young, and Joe had no profession. Uncle Ben thinks the State ought to pay women for bearing children. He says it's their business in life. Women are taking jobs, foregoing marriage, and the nation is being robbed of citizens. He believes that the hardest kind of work is the raising of children, and the women who do it for the State ought to be paid by the State. He does it for me, and I feel as if he was a relation. It's meant everything to Joe and me, and the children, too. Sometimes, when I stop to think of it, it is a little queer, but—when you think of the way people DO spend money, for orchids or old books or rugs—it's natural after all! He simply invests in citizens, that's what he says. I would have had them anyway, but I suppose, indeed I know, Mart, that there are lots of women who wouldn't!"
"And is he financing Joe, too?"
"Oh, no, indeed! Uncle Ben never speaks of money to me; I don't ever get one cent except my regular allowance. Why, when Joe was ill, and one of the babies—Billy, it was—was coming, he came in to see me now and then, but he never said boo about helping! Joe is working his way; he's chauffeur for Dr. Houston; that's something else nobody knows."
"I think that's magnificent of Joe!" Martie said, her face glowing.
"He graduates this year," Sally said proudly, "and then I think he will start here. For a long time we thought we'd have to move away then, because every one remembers little Joe Hawkes delivering papers, and working in the express office. But now that the hospital, up toward the Archer place, is really going to be built, Uncle Ben says that Joe can get a position there. It's Dr. Knowles's hospital, and Uncle Ben is his best friend. Of course that's big luck for Joe."
"Not so much luck," Martie said generously, "as that Joe has worked awfully hard, and done well."
"Oh, you don't know how hard, Mart! And loving us all as he does, too, and being away from us!" Sally agreed fervently. "But if he really gets that position, with my hundred, we'll be rich! We'll have to keep a Ford, Mart; won't that be fun?"
"Dr. Ben might die, Sally," Martie suggested.
"That wouldn't make any difference," the older sister said composedly. "I have the actual deeds—the titles, whatever they are—to the property MY money comes from. He gave me them a year ago, when he was sixty. I certainly dread the talk there'll be when his will comes to light, but Joe will be here then, and Joe isn't afraid of any one."
"He's done for you what Pa should have done," Martie mused.
"Oh, well, Pa did his best for us, Mart." Sally said dutifully; "he gave us a good home—"
"WAS it a good home?" Martie questioned mildly.
"It was a much finer home than MY children have, Mart."
"As far as walls and tables and silver spoons, I suppose it was. But, Sally, there's no child alive who has a sweeter atmosphere than this—always with mother, always learning, and always considered! Why, my boy is blooming already in it!"
Sally's face flushed with pleasure.
"Martie, you make me so proud!"
"If you can only keep it up, Sally. With me it doesn't matter so much, because I've only the one, and no husband whose claims might interfere. But when 'Lizabeth and Mary, as well as the boys, are older—"
"You mean—always let them have their friends at the house, and so on?" Sally asked slowly.
"Yes, but more than that! Let them feel as much a part of the world as the boys do. Put them into any work—only make them respect it!"
"Pa might have helped us, only neither you nor I, nor Lyd, ever showed the least interest in work," Sally submitted thoughtfully.
"Neither did Len—but he MADE Len!"
"Yes, I see what you mean," Sally admitted with an awakening face. "But we would have thought he was pretty stern, Mart," she added.
"Just as children do when they have to learn to read and write," countered Martie. "Don't you see?"
Sally did not see, but she was glad to see Martie's interest. She told Lydia later that Martie really seemed better and more like her old self, even in these few days.
With almost all the women of Monroe, Lydia now considered Martie's life a thing accomplished, and boldly accomplished. To leave home, to marry, to have children in a strange city, to be honorably widowed and to return to her father's home, and rear her child in seclusion and content; this was more than fell to the lot of many women. Lydia listened with actual shudders to Martie's casually dropped revelations.
"This John Dryden that I told you about, Lyd—the man who wrote the play that failed—was anxious for me to go on with the Curley boarding-house," Martie said one day, "and sometimes now I think I should have done so."
"Good heavens!" Lydia, smoothing the thin old blankets on Martie's wide, flat bed, stopped aghast. "But why should you—Pa is more than willing to have you here!"
"I know, darling. But what really deterred me was not so much Pa's generosity, but the fact that I would have had to lease the property for three years; George Curley wanted to be rid of the responsibility. And to really make the thing a success, I should have had the adjoining house, too; that would have been about four thousand rent."
"Four thousand—Martie, you would have been crazy!"
Martie, tinkling pins into a saucer on the bureau, opening the upper drawer to sweep her brush and comb into it, and jerking the limp linen scarf straight, only smiled and shrugged in answer. She had been widowed three months, and already reviving energy and self-confidence were running in her veins. Already she realized that it had been a mistake to accept her father's hospitality in the first panic of being dependent. However graceful and dignified her position was to the outsider's eye, in this old house in the sunken block, she knew now that Pa was really unable to offer her anything more than a temporary relief from financial worry, and that her chances of finding employment in Monroe as compared to New York were about one to ten.
Malcolm Monroe had been deeply involved for several years in "the firm" by which term he and Len referred to their real estate business together. A large tract of grassy brown meadow, south of the town, had been in his possession for thirty years; it was only with the opening of the new "Monroe's Grove" that he had realized its possibilities, or rather that Len had realized them.
Len had held one or two office positions in Monroe unsatisfactorily before his twentieth year, and then had persuaded his father to send him to Berkeley, to the State University. Ma and Lydia had been proud of their under-graduate for one brief year, then Len was back again, disgusted with study. After a few months of drifting and experimenting, the brilliant idea of developing the old south tract into building sites had occurred to Len, and presently his father was also persuaded that here was a splendid opportunity. A little office on Main Street was rented, and its window embellished with the words "Own a Home in the Monroe Estates." Len really worked violently for a time; he rode his bicycle back and forth tirelessly. He married, and moved out into the Estates, and he personally superintended the work that went on there. Streets and plots were laid out, trees planted, the fresh muddy roads were edged with pyramids of brown sewer pipes.
The financial outlay was enormous, unforeseen. Taxes went up, sidewalks crumbled back into the grass again, the four or five unfenced little wooden houses that were erected and occupied added to the general effect of forlornness. The Estates were mortgaged, and to the old mortgage on the homestead another was added.
Len took Martie out to see the place. Slim little trees were bending in a sharp April wind; a small woman at the back of one of the small houses was taking whipping clothes from a line. The streets were deep in mud; Martie smiled as she read the crossposts: "High Street," "Maple Avenue," and "Sunset Avenue." Here and there a sign "Sold" embellished a barren half-acre.
"You've really done wonders, Len," she said encouragingly. "And of course there's nothing like LAND for making money!"
"Oh, there's a barrel of money in it," he answered dubiously, kicking a lump of dirt at his feet. They had left the little car at a comparatively dry crossing, and were walking about. "We've put in a hundred more trees this year, and I think we'll start another house pretty soon." And when they got back in the car, his face flushed from vigorous cranking, he added, "I talked Pa into getting the car; it makes it look as if we were making money!"
"Of course it does," Martie said amiably. She thought her own thoughts.
Lydia had nothing but praise for Len; he had worked like a Trojan, she said. And Pa had been wonderfully patient and good about the whole thing.
"Pa was telling me the other day that he could have gotten ever so much money for this place, if he had had it levelled the time the whole town was," Lydia said, in her curious tone that was triumphantly complaining, one day.
"I wonder what it's worth, as it stands," mused Martie.
"Oh, Martie, I don't know! I don't know anything about it; he just happened to say that!"
It was later on this same day that Martie went in to see Miss Fanny, and put her elbows on the desk, resting her troubled face in her hands.
"Miss Fanny, sometimes I despair! Heaven knows I have had hard knocks enough, and yet I never learn," she burst out. "Seven years ago I used to come in here to you, and rage because I was so helpless! Well, I've had experience since, bitter experience, and yet here I am, helpless and a burden still!"
Miss Fanny smiled her wide, admiring smile. Without a word she reached to a shelf behind her, and handed Martie a familiar old volume: "Choosing a Life Work." The colour rushed into Martie's face as she took it.
"I'll read it NOW!" she said simply.
"If you really want to work, Martie," suggested the older woman, "why don't you come in here with me? Now that we've got the Carnegie endowment, we have actually appropriated a salary for an assistant."
Martie looked at her thoughtfully, looked backward perhaps over the long years.
"I will," she said.