The flat in East Twenty-sixth Street was not what Martie's lonely dreams had fashioned, but she accepted it with characteristic courage and made it a home. She had hoped for something irregular, old-fashioned: big rooms, picturesque windows, picturesque inconveniences, interesting neighbours.
She found five rooms in a narrow, eight-story, brick apartment-house; a narrow parlour with a cherry mantel and green tiles, separated from a narrow bedroom by closed folding doors, a narrow, long hall passing a dark little bathroom and the tiny dark room that Teddy had, a small dining room finished in black wood and red paper, and, wedged against it, a strip of kitchen.
These were small quarters after the airy bareness of the Curley home, and they were additionally reduced in effect by the peculiar taste their first occupant had shown in furnishing. The walls were crowded with heavily framed pictures, coloured photographs of children in livid pink and yellow gowns dancing to the music played by draped ladies at grand pianos; kittens in hats, cheap prints of nude figures, with ugly legends underneath. The chairs were of every period ever sacrificed to flimsy reproduction: gilt, Mission, Louis XIV, Pembroke, and old English oak. There were curtains, tassels, fringes, and portieres everywhere, of cotton brocade, velours, stencilled burlap, and "art" materials generally. There was a Turkish corner, with a canopy, daggers, crescents, and cushions. The bookcase in the parlour and the china cabinet in the dining room were locked. The latter was so large, and the room it adorned so small, that it stood at an angle, partly shutting out the light of the one window. Every room except the parlour opened upon an air-well, spoken of by the agent as "the court." The rent was fifty dollars, and Wallace considered the place a bargain.
For the first day or two Martie laughed bravely at her surroundings, finding in this vase or that picture cause for great amusement. She promised herself that she would store some of these horrors, but inasmuch as there was not a spare inch in the flat for storage, it was decidedly simplest to leave them where they were. Wallace did not mind them, and Wallace's happiness was her aim in life.
But, strangely, after the first excitement of his return was over, a cool distaste descended upon her. Before the first weeks of the new life were over, she found herself watching her husband with almost hostile eyes. It must be wrong for a wife to feel so abysmal—so overwhelming an indifference toward the man whose name she bore. Wallace, weary with the moving, his collar off, his thick neck bare, his big pale face streaked with drying perspiration, was her husband after all. She was angry at herself for noticing that his sleek hair was thinning, that the old look of something not fine was stamped more deeply upon his face. She resolutely suppressed the deepening resentment that grew under his kisses; kisses scented with alcohol.
Generations of unquestioning wives behind her, she sternly routed the unbidden doubts, she deliberately put from her thoughts many another disillusion as the days went by. She was a married woman now, protected and busy; she must not dream like a romantic girl. There was delightfully novel cooking to do; there was freedom from hateful business responsibility. All beginnings were hard, she told her shrinking soul; she was herself changed by the years; what wonder that Wallace was changed?
Perhaps in his case it was less change than the logical development of qualities that would have been distinctly discernible to clearer eyes than hers in the very hour of their meeting. Wallace had always drifted with the current, as he was drifting now. He would have been as glad as she, had success come instead of failure; he did not even now habitually neglect his work, nor habitually drink. It was merely that his engagement was much less distinguished than he had told her it was, his part was smaller, his pay smaller, and his chances of promotion lessening with every year. He had never been a student of life, nor interested in anything that did not touch his own comfort; but in the first days of their love, days of youth and success and plenty, Martie had been as frankly an egotist as he. His heaviness, his lack of interest in what excited her, his general unresponsiveness, came to her now more as a recollection than a surprise.
The farce in which he had a part really did prove fairly successful, and his salary was steady and his hours comfortable until after the new year. Then the run ended, and Wallace drifted for three or four weeks that were full of deep anxiety for Martie.
When he was engaged again, in a vaudeville sketch that was booked for a few weeks on one of the smaller circuits about New York, she had some difficulty in making him attend rehearsals, and take his part seriously. His friends were generally of the opinion that it was beneath his art. His wife urged that "it might lead to something."
Wallace was amused at her concern. Actors never worked the whole year round, he assured her. There was nothing doing in the summertime, ever. Martie remarked, with a half-sorry laugh, that a salary of one hundred dollars a week for ten weeks was less than eighty-five dollars a month, and the same salary, if drawn for only five weeks, came to something less than a living income.
"Don't worry!" Wallace said.
"Wallace, it's not for myself. It's for the—the children. My dear! If it wasn't for that, it would be a perfect delight to me to take luck just as it came, go to Texas or Canada with you, work up parts myself!" she would answer eagerly. She wanted to be a good wife to him, to give him just what all men wanted in their wives. But under all her bravery lurked a sick sense of defeat. He never knew how often he failed her.
And he was older. He was not far from forty, and his youth was gone. He did not care for the little dishes Martie so happily prepared, the salads and muffins, the eggs "en cocotte" and "suzette." He wanted thick broiled steak, and fried potatoes, and coffee, and nothing else. He slept late in the mornings, coming out frowsy-headed in undershirt and trousers to breakfast at ten or eleven, reading the paper while he ate, and scenting the room with thick cigar smoke.
Martie waited on him, interrupting his reading with her chatter. She would sit opposite him, watching the ham and eggs vanish, and the coffee go in deep, appreciative gulps.
"How d'you feel, Wallie?"
"Oh, rotten. My head is the limit!"
"Too bad! More coffee?"
"Nope. Was that the kid banging this morning?"
"My dear, he was doing it just for the time it took me to snatch the hammer away! I was so sorry!"
"Oh, that's all right." He would yawn. "Lord, I feel rotten!"
"Isn't it perhaps—drinking and smoking so much, Wallace?" Martie might venture timidly.
"That has nothing to do with it!"
"But, Wallie, how do you know it hasn't?"
"Because I do know it!"
He would return to his paper, and Martie to her own thoughts. She would yawn stupidly, when he yawned, in the warm, close air. Sometimes she went into the tumbled bedrooms and put them in order, gathering up towels and scattered garments. But usually Wallace did not bathe until after his breakfast, and nothing could be done until that was over. Equally, Martie's affairs kitchenward were delayed; sometimes Wallace's rolls were still warming in the oven when she put in Teddy's luncheon potato to bake. The groceries ordered by telephone would arrive, and be piled over the unwashed dishes on the table, the frying pan burned dry over and over again.
After Teddy and his mother had lunched, if Wallace was free, they all went out together. He was devoted to the boy, and broke ruthlessly into his little schedule of hours and meals for his own amusement. Or he and Martie went alone to a matinee. But when he was playing in vaudeville, even if he lived at home, he must be at the theatre at four and at nine. Often on Sunday afternoons he went out to meet his friends, to drift about the theatrical clubs and hotels, and dine away from home.
Then Martie would take Teddy out, happy times for both. They went to the library, to the museums, to the aquarium and the Zoo. Martie came to love the second-hand book-stores, where she could get George Eliot's novels for ten cents each, a complete Shakespeare for twenty-five. She drank in the passing panorama of the streets: the dripping "L" stations, the light of the chestnut dealer, a blowing flame in the cold and dark, the dirty powder of snow blowing along icy sidewalks, and the newspapers weighted down at corner stands with pennies lying here and there in informal exchange. Cold, rosy faces poured into the subway hoods, warm, pale faces poured out, wet feet slipped on the frozen rubbish of the sidewalks, little salesgirls gossiped cheerfully as they dangled on straps in the packed cars.
Often Martie and Teddy had their supper at Childs', in the clean warm brightness of marble and nickel-plate. Teddy knew their waitress and chattered eagerly over his rice and milk. Martie had a sandwich and coffee, watching the shabby fingers that fumbled for five-cent tips, the anxious eyes studying the bill-of-fare, the pale little working-women who favoured a supper of butter cakes and lemon meringue pie after the hard day.
She would go home to find the breakfast dishes waiting, the beds unmade, the bathroom still steamed from Wallace's ablutions. Teddy tucked away for the night, she would dream over a half-sensed book. Why make the bed she was so soon to get into? Why wash the dishes now rather than wait until she was in her comfortable wrapper? She went back to her old habit of nibbling candy as she read.
The jolly little Bohemian suppers she had foreseen never became a reality. Wallace hated cheap food; he was done with little restaurants, he said. More than that, among his friends there did not seem to be any of those simple, busy, gifted artists to whose acquaintance Martie had looked forward. The more distinguished members of his company he hardly knew; the others were semi-successful men like himself, women too poor and too busy to waste time or money, or other women of a more or less recognized looseness of morals. Martie detested them, their cologne, their boasting, their insinuations as to the personal lives of every actor or actress who might be mentioned. They had no reserves, no respect for love or marriage or parenthood; they told stories entirely beyond her understanding, and went about eating, drinking, dressing, and dancing as if these things were all the business of life.
Wallace's favourite hospitality was extended to six silent, overdressed, genial male friends, known as "the crowd." These he frequently asked to dinner on Sunday nights, a hard game of poker always following. Martie did not play, but she liked to watch her husband's hands, and during this winter he attributed his phenomenal good luck to her. He never lost, and he always parted generously with such sums as he won. He loved his luck; the envious comments of the other players delighted him; the good dinner, and the presence of his beautiful wife always put him in his best mood. They called him "Three deuces Wallie," and Martie's remark that his weight was also "Two—two—two" passed for wit.
She took his winnings without shame. It was to take them, indeed, that she endured the long, silent evening, with its incessant muttering and shuffling and slapping of cards. The gas whined and rasped above their heads, the air grew close and heavy with smoke. Ash-trays were loaded with the stumps and ashes of cigars; sticky beer glasses ringed the bare table. But Martie stuck to her post. At one o'clock it would all be over, and Wallace, carrying a glass of whisky-and-soda to his room, would be undressing between violent yawns and amused recollections.
"Some of that comes to me, Wallie. I have the rent coming this week!"
"Sure. Take all you want, old girl. You're tired, aren't you?"
"Tired and cold." Martie's circulation was not good now, and she knew why. Her meals had lost their interest, and sometimes even Teddy's claims were neglected. She was sleepy, tired, heavy all the time. "When I see a spoon lying on the dining-room floor, and realize that it will lie there until I pick it up I could scream!" she told Wallace.
"It's a shame, poor old girl!"
"Oh, no—it's all right." She would blink back the tears. "I'm not sorry!"
But she was sorry and afraid. She resented Wallace's easy sympathy, resented the doctor's advice to rest, not to worry, his mild observation that a good deal of discomfort was inevitable.
Early in the new year she began to agitate the question of a dinner to the Drydens. Wallace, who had taken a fancy to Adele, agreed lazily to endure John's company, which he did not enjoy, for one evening. But he obstinately overruled Martie on the subject of a dinner at home.
"Nix," said Wallace flatly. "I won't have my wife cooking for anybody!"
"But Wallace—just grape-fruit and broilers and a salad! And they'll come out and help cook it. You don't know how informally we did things at Grandma's!"
"Well, you're not doing things informally now. It would be different if you had a couple of servants!"
"But it may be years before we have a couple of servants. Aren't we ever going to entertain, until then?"
"I don't know anything about that. But I tell you I won't have them thinking that we're hard up. I'll take them to a restaurant somewhere, and show that little boob a square meal!"
He finally selected an oppressively magnificent restaurant where a dollar-and-a-half table-d'hote dinner was served.
"But I'd like to blow them to a real dinner!" he regretted.
"Oh, Wallace, I'm not trying to impress them! We'll have more than enough to eat, and music, and a talk. Then we can break up at about ten, and we'll have done the decent thing!"
The four were to meet at half-past six, but both Adele and Wallace were late, and John and Martie had half an hour's talk while they waited. Martie fairly bubbled in her joy at the chance to speak of books and poems, ideals and reforms again. She told him frankly and happily that she had missed him; she had wanted to see him so many times! And he looked tired; he had had grippe?
"Always motherly!" he said, a smile on the strange mouth, but no corresponding smile in the faunlike eyes.
Wallace arrived in a bad mood, as Martie instantly perceived. But Adele, radiant in a new hat, was prettily concerned for his cold and fatigue, and they were quickly escorted to a table near the fountain, and supplied with cocktails. Cheered, Wallace demanded the bill-of-fare, "the table-d'hote, Handsome!" said he to the appreciative waiter.
The man lowered his head and murmured obsequiously. The table-d'hote dinner was served only on the balcony, sir.
This caused a halt in the rising gaiety. The group looked a little blank. They were established here, the ladies had surrendered their wraps, envious late-comers were eying their table. Still Martie did not hesitate. She straightened back in her chair, and pushed her hands at full length upon the table, preliminary to rising.
"Then we'll go up!" she said sensibly. But Wallace demurred. What was the difference! They would stay here.
The difference proved to be about twenty dollars.
"I hope it was worth it to you!" Wallace said bitterly to his wife at breakfast the next day. "Twenty-six dollars the check was. It was worth about twenty-six cents to me!"
"But, Wallie, you didn't have to order wine!"
"I didn't expect to order it, and if that boob had had the sense to know it, it was up to him to pay for it!"
"Why, he's a perfect babe-in-the-woods about such things, Wallie! And none of us wanted it!" Martie tried to speak quietly, but at the memory of the night before her anger began to smoulder. Wallace had deliberately urged the ordering of wine, John quite as innocently disclaimed it. Adele had laughed that she could always manage a glass of champagne; Martie had merely murmured, "But we don't need it, Wallie; we've had so much now!"
"We couldn't sit there holding that table down all evening," Wallace said now. Martie with a great effort kept silence. Opening his paper, her husband finished the subject sharply. "I want to tell you right now, Mart, that with me ordering the dinner, it was up to him to pay for the wine! Any man would know that! Ask any one of the crowd. He's a boob, that's all, and I'm done with him!"
Martie rose, and went quietly into the kitchen. There was nothing to say. She did not speak of the Drydens again for a long while. Her own condition engrossed her; and she was not eager to take the initiative in hospitality or anything else.
In April Wallace went on the road again for eleven weeks, and Martie and Ted enjoyed a delicious spring together. They spent hours on the omnibuses, hours in the parks. Spring in the West was cold, erratic; spring here came with what a heavenly wash of fragrance and heat! It was like a re-birth to abandon all the heavy clothing of the winter, to send Teddy dancing into the sunshine in socks and galatea and straw hat again!
Martie's son was almost painfully dear to her. Every hour of his life, from the helpless days in the big hospital, through creeping and stammering and stumbling, she had clung to his little phases with hungry adoration, and that there was a deep sympathy between their two natures she came to feel more strongly every day. They talked confidentially together, his little body jolting against hers on the jolting omnibus, or leaning against her knees as she sat in the Park. She lingered in the lonely evening over the ceremony of his bath, his undressing, his prayers, and the romping that was always the last thing. For his sake, her love went out to meet the newcomer; another soft little Teddy to watch and bathe and rock to sleep; the reign of double-gowns and safety-pins and bottles again! Writing Wallace one of the gossipy, detailed letters that acknowledged his irregular checks, she said that they must move in the fall. They really, truly needed a better neighbourhood, a better nursery for "the children."
One hot, heavy July morning she fell into serious musing over the news of Grandma Curley's death. Her son, a spoiled idler of forty, inherited the business. He wanted to know if Mrs. Bannister could come back. The house had never prospered so well as under her management. She could make her own terms.
The sun was pouring into East Twenty-sixth Street, flashing an ugly glaring reflection against the awnings. At nine, the day was burning hot. Teddy, promised a trip to the Zoo, was loitering on the shady steps of the houses opposite, conscious of clean clothes, and of a holiday mood. The street was empty; a hurdy-gurdy unseen poured forth a brassy flood of sound. Trains, on the elevated road at the corner, crashed by. Martie had been packing a lunch; she went slowly back to the cut loaf and the rapidly softening butter.
"Happy, Teddy?" she asked, when they had found seats in the train, and were rushing over the baking stillness of the city.
"Are you, Moth'?" he asked quickly.
She nodded, smiling. But, for some reasons vaguely defined, she was heavy-hearted. The city's endless drama of squalor and pain was all about her; she could not understand, she could not help, she could not even lift her own little problem out of the great total of failures! All day long the sense of impotence assailed her.
Wallace was at home, when they came back, heavily asleep across his bed. Martie, with firmly shut lips, helped him into bed, and made the strong coffee for which he longed. After drinking it, he gave her a resentful, painstaking account of his unexpected return. His face was flushed, his voice thick. She gathered that he had lost his position.
"He came right up to me before Young, d'ye see? He put it up to me. 'Nelson,' I says, 'Nelson, this isn't a straight deal!' I says. 'My stuff is my stuff,' I says, 'but this is something else again.' 'Wallie,' he says, 'that may be right, too. But listen,' he says. I says, 'I'm going to do damn little listening to you or Young!' I says, 'Cut that talk about my missing rehearsals—'"
The menacing, appealing voice went on and on. Martie watched him in something far beyond scorn or shame. He had not shaved recently, his face was blotched.
"What else could I do, Mart?" he asked presently. She answered with a long sigh:
"Nothing, I suppose, Wallace."
After a while he slept heavily. The afternoon was brassy hot. Women manipulated creaking clotheslines across the long double row of backyards; the day died on a long, gasping twilight. Martie let Teddy go to the candy store for ten cents' worth of ice cream for his supper. She made herself iced tea, and deliberately forced herself to read. To-night she would not think. After a while she wrote her letter of regret to George Curley.
The situation was far from desperate, after all. Wallace had a headache the next day, but on the day after that he shaved and dressed carefully, assured his wife that this experience should be the last of its type, and began to look for an engagement. He had some money, and he insisted upon buying her a thin, dark gown, loose and cool. He carried Teddy off for whole afternoons, leaving Martie to doze, read, and rest; and learning that she still had a bank account of something more than three hundred dollars—left from poker games and from her old bank account—she engaged a stupid, good-natured coloured girl to do the heavy work. Isabeau Eato was willing and strong, and for three dollars a week she did an unbelievable amount of drudgery. Martie felt herself fortunate, and listened to the crash of dishes, the running of water, and the swish of Isabeau's broom with absolute satisfaction.
One broiling afternoon she was trying to read in the darkened dining room. Heat was beating against the prostrate city in metallic waves, but since noon there had been occasional distant flashes toward the west, and faint rumblings that predicted the coming storm. In an hour or two the streets would be awash, and white hats and flimsy gowns flying toward shelter; meanwhile, there was only endurance. She could only breathe the motionless leaden air, smell the dry, stale odours of the house, and listen to the thundering drays and cars in the streets.
Wallace had gone to Yonkers to see a moving picture manager; Isabeau had taken Teddy with her on a trip to the Park. Sitting back in a deep chair, with her back to the dazzling light of the window, Martie closed her book, shut her eyes, and fell into a reverie. Expense, pain, weakness, helplessness; she dreaded them all. She dreaded the doctor, the hospital, the brisk, indifferent nurses; she hated above all the puzzled realization that all this cost to her was so wasted; Wallace was not sorry for the child's coming, nor was she; that was all. No one was glad. No one praised her for the slow loss of days and nights, for dependence, pain, and care. Her children might live to comfort her; they might not. She had been no particular comfort to her own father—her own mother—
Tears slipped through her closed lids, and for a moment her lips quivered. She struggled half-angrily for self-control, and opened her book.
"Martie?" said a voice from the doorway. She looked up to see John Dryden standing there.
The sight of the familiar crooked smile, and the half-daring, half-bashful eyes, stirred her heart with keen longing; she needed friendship, sympathy, understanding so desperately! She clung eagerly to his hands.
He sat down beside her, and rumpled his hair in furious embarrassment and excitement, studying her with a wistful and puzzled smile. She did not realize how her pale face, loosely massed hair, and black-rimmed eyes impressed him.
"John! I am so glad! Tell me everything; how are you, and how's Adele?"
Adele was well. He was well. His wife's sister, Mrs. Baker of Browning, Indiana, was visiting them. Things were much the same at the office. He had not been reading anything particularly good.
She laughed at his sparse information.
"But, John—talk! Have you been to any lectures lately? What have you been doing?" she demanded.
"I've been thinking for days of what we should talk about when we saw each other," he said, laughing excitedly. "But now that I'm here I can't remember them!"
The sense his presence always gave her, of being at ease, of being happily understood, was enveloping Martie. She was as comfortable with John as she might have been with Sally, as sure of his affection and interest. She suddenly realized that she had missed John of late, without quite knowing what it was she missed.
"You're going on with your writing, John?"
"Oh"—he rumpled his hair again—"what's the use?"
"Why, that's no way to talk. Aren't you doing ANYTHING?"
"Not much," he grinned boyishly.
"But, John, that's sheer laziness! How do you ever expect to get out of the groove, if you don't make a start?"
"Oh, damn it all, Martie," he said mildly, with a whimsical smile, "what's the use? I suppose there isn't a furniture clerk in the city that doesn't feel he is fit for great things!"
"You didn't talk like this last year," Martie said, in disappointment and reproach. John looked at her uneasily, and then said boldly:
"How's Ted?"
"Sweet." Martie laid one hand on her breast, and drew a short, stifled breath. "Isn't it fearful?" she said, of the heat.
John nodded absently: she knew him singularly unaffected by anything so trivial as mere heat or cold. He was fingering a magazine carelessly, suddenly he flung it aside.
"I am writing something, of course!" he confessed. "But it seems sort of rotten, to me."
"But I'm glad!" she said, with shining eyes.
"I work at it in the office," John added. "And what is it?"
"You know what it is: you suggested it!"
"Idid?"
"You said it would make a good play."
Martie's thin cheek dimpled, she widened her eyes.
"I don't remember!"
"It was when I was reading Strickland's 'Queens.' You said that this one's life would make a good play."
"Oh, I do dimly remember!" She knotted her brows. "Mary—Mary Isabelle—an Italian girl?—wasn't it?"
"Mary Beatrice," he corrected simply.
"Of course! And does it work up pretty well?"
"Fine!"
"How much have you done, John?"
"Oh, not much!"
"Oh, John, for heaven's sake—you will drive me insane!" she laughed joyously, laying her hand over his. "Tell me about it." She laughed again when he drew some crumpled pages from his pocket. But he was presently garrulous, sketching his plan to her, reading a passage here and there, firing her with his own interest and delight. He had as little thought of boring her as she of being bored, they fled together from the noise and heat of the city, and trod the Dover sands, and rode triumphant into the old city of London at the King's side.
"I'm not a judge—I wish I was," she said finally. "But it seems to me extraordinary!"
He silently folded the sheets, and put them away. Glancing at his face, she saw that its thoughtful look was almost stern. Martie wondered if she had said something to offend him.
When he sat down beside her again, she again laid her hand on his.
"What is it, John?" she asked anxiously.
"Nothing!" he said, with a brief glance and smile.
"I've made you cross?"
"You!" His dark gaze was on the floor, his hands locked. For a full minute there was silence in the room. Then he looked up at her with a disturbing smile. "I am human, Martie," he said simply.
The note was so new in their relationship that Martie's heart began to hammer with astonishment and with a curious thrilling pleasure. There was nothing for her to say. She could hardly believe that he knew what he implied, or that she construed the words aright. He was so different from all other men, so strangely old in many ways, so boyish in others. A little frightened, she smiled at him in silence. But he did not raise his eyes to meet her look.
"I did not think that when I was thirty I would be a clerk in a furniture house, Martie!" he said sombrely, after awhile.
"You may not be!" she reminded him hearteningly. And presently she added: "I did not think that I would be a poor man's wife on the upper East Side!"
He looked up then with a quick smile.
"Isn't it the deuce?" he asked.
"Life is queer!" Martie said, shrugging.
"I was up in Connecticut last week," John said, "and I'll tell you what I saw there. I went up to that neighbourhood to buy some old furniture for an order we were filling—I was there only a few hours. I found a little old white house, on a river bank, with big trees over it. It was on a foundation of old stones, that had been painted white, and there was an orchard, with a stone wall. The man wanted eighteen hundred dollars for it."
"Is THAT all?" Martie asked, amazed.
"That's all. I sat there and talked to him for awhile."
"Well?" said Martie, as he stopped.
"Well, nothing," he answered, after a moment's pause. "Only I've been thinking about it ever since—what it would be to live there, and write, and walk about that little farm! Funny, isn't it? Eighteen hundred dollars—not much, only I'll never have it. And you are another poor man's wife—only not mine! Do you believe in God?"
"You know I do!" she answered, laughing, but a little shaken by his seriousness.
"You think GOD manages things this way?"
"John, don't talk like a high school boy!"
"I suppose it sounds that way," he said mildly, and he rose suddenly from his chair. "Well, I have to go!" He looked at her keenly. "But you don't look very well, Martie," he said. "You've no colour at all. Is it the weather?"
"John, what a baby you are!" But Martie was amazed, under her flush of laughter, at his simplicity. Could it be possible that he did not know? "I am expecting something very precious here one of these days," she said. He looked at her with a polite smile, entirely uncomprehending. "Surely you know that we—that I—am going to have another baby, John?" she asked.
She saw the muscles of his face stiffen, and the blood rise. He looked at her steadily. A curious silence hung between them.
"Didn't you know?" Martie pursued lightly.
"No," he said at last thickly, "I didn't know." He gave her a look almost frightening in its wildness; shot to the heart, he might have managed just such a smile. He made a frantic gesture with his hands. "Of course—" he said at random. "Of course—a baby!" He walked across the room to look at a picture on the wall. "That's rather—pretty!" he said in a suffocating voice. Suddenly he came back, and sat close beside her; his face was pale. "Martie," he said pitifully, "it's dangerous for you—you're not strong, and if you—if you die, you know——You look pale now, and you're so thin. I don't know anything about it, but I wish it was over!"
Tears sprang to Martie's eyes, but they were tears of exquisite joy. She laid a warm hand over his.
"Why, John, dear, there's no danger!"
"Isn't there?" he asked doubtfully.
"Not the least, you goose! I'm ever so glad and proud about it—don't look so woe-begone!"
Their hands were tightly locked: her face was radiant as she smiled up at him.
"It all works out, John—the furniture clerking, you know, and the being poor, and all that!"
"Sure it does!"
"Other people have succeeded in spite of it, I mean, so why not you and I?"
"Of course, they're not BORN rich and successful," he submitted thoughtfully.
"Look at Lincoln—and Napoleon!" Martie said hardily.
John scowled down at the hand he held.
"Well, it's easier for some people than others," he stated firmly. "Lincoln may have had to split rails for his supper—what DO you split rails for, anyway?" he interrupted himself to ask, suddenly diverted.
"Fences, I guess!" Martie offered, on a gale of laughter.
"Well, whatever it was. But I don't see what they needed so many fences for! But anyway, being poor or rich doesn't seem to matter half as much as some other things! And now I'm going. Good-bye, Martie."
"And write me, John, and send me books!" she urged, as he turned away.
He was at the door: meditating with his hand on the knob, and his back turned to her. Martie watched him, expecting some parting word. But he did not even turn to smile a farewell. He let himself quietly out without another glance, and was gone. A moment later she heard the outer door close.
She sat on, in the darkening room, her book forgotten. The storm was coming fast now. Women in the backyards were drawing in their clothes-lines with a great creaking and rattling, and the first rush of warm, sullen drops struck the dusty dining-room window. Curtains streamed, and pictures on the wall stirred in the damp, warm wind.
Half an hour of furious musketry passed: blue dashes lighted the room with an eerie splendour, thunder clapped and rolled; died away toward the south as a fresh onslaught poured in from the north.
Martie heeded nothing. Her soul was wrapped in a deep peace, and as the cooling air swept in, she dropped her tired head against the chair's cushion, and drifted into a dream of river and orchard, and of a white house set in green grass.
She knew that John would write her: she held the unopened envelope in her fingers the next morning, a strange, sweet emotion at her heart. The beautiful, odd handwriting, the cleanly chosen words, these made the commonplace little note significant.
"Who's your letter from?" Wallace asked idly. She tossed it to him unconcernedly: she had told him of John's call. "He must have a case on you, Mart!" Wallace said indifferently.
"Well, in his curious way, perhaps he has," she answered honestly.
Ten days later she wrote him an answer. She thanked him for the books, and announced that her daughter Margaret was just a week old, and sent her love to Uncle John. Adele immediately sent baby roses and a card to say that she was dying to see the baby, and would come soon. She never came: but after that John wrote occasionally to Martie, and she answered his notes. They did not try to meet.
Wallace was playing a few weeks' engagement in the vaudeville houses of New Jersey and Brooklyn when his second child was born. He had been at home for a few hours that morning, coming in for clean linen, a good breakfast, and a talk with his wife. He was getting fifty dollars a week, as support for a woman star, and was happy and confident. The hard work—twelve performances a week—left small time for idling or drinking, and Martie's eager praise added the last touch to his content.
She was happy, too, as she walked back into the darkened, orderly house. It was just noon. Isabeau, having finished her work, had departed with Teddy to see a friend in West One Hundredth Street; John had sent Martie Maeterlinck's "Life of the Bee," and a fat, inviting brown book, "All the Days of My Life." She had planned to go to the hospital next week, Wallace coming home on Sunday to act as escort, and she determined to keep the larger book for the stupid days of convalescence.
She stretched herself on the dining-room couch, reached for the smaller book, and began to read. For a second, a look of surprise crossed her face, and she paused. Then she found the opening paragraph, and plunged into the story. But she had not read three sentences before she stopped again.
Suddenly, in a panic, she was on her feet. Frightened, breathless, laughing, she went into the kitchen.
"Isabeau out ... Heavenly day! What shall I do!" she whispered. "It can't be! Fool that I was to let her go ... what SHALL I do!"
Life caught her and shook her like a helpless leaf in a whirlwind. She went blindly into the bedroom and began feverishly to fling off her outer garments. Presently she made her way back to the kitchen again, and put her lips to the janitor's telephone.
Writhing seconds ensued. Finally she heard the shrill answering whistle.
"Mr. Kelly, is Mrs. Brice at home, do you know? Or Mrs. Napthaly? This is Mrs. Bannister... I'm ill. Will you get somebody?"
She broke off abruptly; catching the back of a chair. Kelly was a grandfather ... he would understand. But if somebody didn't come pretty soon...
It seemed hours; it was only minutes before the blessed sound of waddling feet came to the bedroom door. Old Grandma Simons, Mrs. Napthaly's mother, came in. Martie liked and Teddy loved the shapeless, moustached old woman, who lived out obscure dim days in the flat below, washing and dressing and feeding little black-eyed grandchildren. Martie never saw her in anything but a baggy, spotted black house-dress, but there were great gatherings and feasts occasionally downstairs, and then presumably the adored old head of the family was more suitably clad.
"Vell ... vot you try and do?" said Grandma Simons, grasping the situation at once, and full of sympathy and approval.
"I don't know!" half-laughed, half-gasped Martie from the pillows. "I'm awfully afraid my baby..." A spasm of pain brought her on one elbow, to a raised position. "Oh, DON'T DO THAT!" she screamed.
"I do nothing!" said the old woman soothingly. And as Martie sank back on the pillows, gasping and exhausted, yet with excited relief brightening her face, Grandma Simons added triumphantly: "Now you shall rest; you are a goot girl!"
A second later the thin cry with which the newborn catch the first weary breath of an alien world floated through the room. Protesting, raw, it fell on Martie's ears like the resolving chord of an exquisite melody. Still breathless, still panting from strain and fright, she smiled.
"Ah, the darling! Is he all right?" she whispered.
"You haf a girl!" the old woman interrupted her clucking and grumbling to say briefly. "Vill you lay still, and let the old Grandma fix you, or not vill you?" she added sternly. "Grandma who has het elefen of dem...."
"Don't cry, little Margaret!" Martie murmured, happy under the kindly adjusting old hands. The old woman stumped about composedly, opening bureau drawers and scratching matches in the kitchen, before she would condescend to telephone for the superfluous doctor. She was pouring a flood of Yiddish endearments and diminutives about the newcomer, when the surprised practitioner arrived. Mrs. Simons scouted the idea of a nurse; she would come upstairs, her daughters would come upstairs—what was it, one baby! Martie was allowed a cupful of hot milk, and went to sleep with one arm about the flannel bundle that was Margaret.
Well—she thought, drifting into happy dreams—of course, the hospital was wonderful: the uniformed nurses, the system, the sanitation. But this was wonderful, too. So many persons had to be consulted, had to be involved, in the coming of a hospital baby; so much time, so many different rooms and hallways.
The clock had not yet struck two; she had given Wallace his breakfast at eleven, Isabeau would be home at five; Grandma had gone downstairs to borrow some of the put-away clothes of the last little Napthaly. Martie had nothing to do but smile and sleep. To-morrow, perhaps, they would let her go on with "The Life of the Bee."
Peace lapped soul and body. The long-approaching trial was over. In a few days she would arise, mistress of herself once more, and free to remake her life.
First, they must move. Even if they could afford to pay six hundred dollars a year in rent, this flat was neither convenient nor sanitary for little children. Secondly, Wallace must understand that while he worked and was sober, his wife would do her share; if he failed her, she must find some other life. Thirdly, as soon as the baby's claims made it possible, Martie must find some means of making money; her own money, independent of what Wallace chose to give.
She pondered the various possibilities. She could open a boarding-house; although that meant an outlay for furniture and rent. She could take a course in library work or stenography; that meant leaving the children all day.
She began to study advertisements in the newspapers for working housekeepers, and one day wrote a businesslike application to the company that controlled a line of fruit steamers between the city and Panama. Mrs. Napthaly's sister-in-law was stewardess on one of these, and had good pay. Short stories, film-plays, newspaper work—other women did these things. But how had they begun?
"Begin at the beginning!" she said cheerfully to herself. The move was the beginning. Through the cool autumn days she resolutely hunted for flats. It was a wearisome task, especially when Wallace accompanied her, for his tastes ran to expensive and vestibuled apartments and fashionable streets. Martie sternly held to quiet side streets, cut off from the city by the barriers of elevated trains and the cheap shopping districts.
When she found what she wanted, she and Wallace had a bitter struggle. He refused at first to consider four large bare shabby rooms in a poor street, overlooking a coal-yard, and incidentally, on the very bank of the East River. What cars went there, he demanded indignantly; what sort of neighbours would they have? What would their friends think!
Martie patiently argued her point. The neighbourhood, the east fifties, if cheap and crowded, was necessarily quiet because the wide street ended at the river. The rooms were on a first floor, and so pleasantly accessible for baby and baby-carriage. The coalyard, if not particularly pleasant, was not unwholesome; there was sunshine in every room, and finally, the rent was eighteen dollars. They must entertain their friends elsewhere.
She did not know then that what really won him was her youth and beauty; the new brilliant colour, the blue, blue eyes, the revived strength and charm of the whole, lovely woman. She put her arms about him, and he kissed her and gave her her way.
Happily they went shopping. Martie had gathered some furniture in her various housekeeping adventures; the rest must be bought. They prowled through second-hand stores for the big things: beds, tables, a "chestard" for Wallace. The cottage china, chintzes, net curtains, and grass rugs were new. Martie conceded a plaster pipe-rack, set with little Indian faces, to Wallace; her own extravagance was a meat-chopper. Wallace got a cocktail shaker, and when the first grocery order went in, gin and vermouth and whisky-were included. Martie made their first meal a celebration, in the room that was sitting-and dining-room combined, and tired and happy, they sat long into the evening over the table, talking of the future.
Theoretically, Wallace agreed with her. If they were to succeed, there must be hard work, carefully controlled expenditure, and temperance. They were still young, their children were well, and life was before them. In a few years Wallace might make a big success; then they could have a little country home, and belong to a country club, and really live. Eager tears brimmed Martie's eyes as she planned and he approved.
Actually, Wallace was not quite so satisfactory. He would be sweet-tempered and helpful for a few days, but he expected a reward. He expected his wife's old attitude of utter trust and devotion. Rewarded by a happy evening when they dined and talked in utter harmony, he would fail her again. Then came dark days, when Martie's heart smouldered resentfully hour after busy hour. How could he—how could he risk his position, waste his money, antagonize his wife, break all his promises! She could not forgive him this time, she could not go through the humiliating explanations, apologies, asseverations, again be reconciled and again deceived!
He knew how to handle her, and she knew he knew. When the day or two of sickness and headache were over he would shave and dress carefully and come quietly and penitently back into the life of the house. Would Ted like to go off with Dad for a walk? Couldn't he go to market for her? Couldn't he go along and wheel Margaret?
Silently, with compressed lips, Martie might pass and repass him. But the moment always came when he caught her and locked her in his arms.
"Martie, dearest! I know how you feel—I won't blame you! I know what a skunk and a beast I am. What can I do? How can I show you how sorry I am? Don't—don't feel so badly! Tell me anything—any oath, any promise, I'll make it! You're just breaking my heart, acting like this!"
For half an hour, for an hour, her hurt might keep her unresponsive. In the end, she always kissed him, with wet eyes, and they began again.
Happy hours followed. Wallace would help her with the baby's bath, with Teddy's dressing, and the united Bannisters go forth for a holiday. Martie, her splendid square little son leaning on her shoulder, the veiled bundle of blankets that was Margaret safely sleeping in the crib, her handsome husband dressing for "a party," felt herself a blessed and happy woman.
Frequently, when he was not playing, they went to matinees, afterward drifting out into the five o'clock darkness to join the Broadway current. Here Wallace always met friends: picturesque looking men, and bright-eyed, hard-faced women. Invariably they went into some hotel, and sat about a bare table, for drinks. Warmed and cheered, the question of convivialities arose.
"Lissen; we are all going to Kingwell's for eats," Wallace would tell his wife.
"But, Wallace, Isabeau is going to have dinner at home!" It was no use; the bright eye, the thickened lips, the loosened speech evaded her. He understood her, he had perfect self-control, but she could influence him no longer. Mutinous, she would go with the chattering women into the dressing room, where they powdered, rouged lips and cheeks, and fluffed their hair.
"Lord, he is a scream, that boy!" Mrs. Dolly Fairbanks might remark appreciatively, offering Martie a mud-coloured powder-pad before restoring it to the top of her ravelled silk stocking. "I'll bet he's a scream in his own home!"
Martie could only smile forcedly in response. She was not in sympathy with her companions. She hated the extravagance, the noise, and the drinking that were a part of the evening's fun. Wallace's big, white, ringed hand touched the precious greenbacks so readily; here! they wanted another round of drinks; what did everybody want?
Wherever they went, the scene was the same: heat, tobacco smoke, music; men drinking, women drinking, greenbacks changing hands, waiters pocketing tips. Who liked it? she asked herself bitterly. In the old days she and Sally had thought it would be fun to be in New York, to know real actors and actresses, to go about to restaurants in taxicabs. But what if the money that paid for the taxicabs were needed for Ted's winter shirts and Margar's new crib? What if the actors were only rather stupid and excitable, rather selfish and ignorant men and women, to whom homes and children, gardens and books were only words?
Presumably the real actors, the real writers and painters led a mad and merry life somewhere, wore priceless gowns and opened champagne; but it was not here. These were the imitators, the pretenders, and the rich idlers who had nothing better to do than believe in the pretenders.
Still, when Wallace suggested it, Martie found it wise to yield. He might stumble home beside her at eleven, the worse for the eating and drinking, but at least he did come home, and she could tell herself that the men in the car who had smiled at his condition were only brutes; she would never see them again; what did their opinion matter! In other ways she yielded to him; peace, peace and affection at any cost. Yet it cost her dear, for the possibility of another child's coming was the one thought that frightened and dismayed her.
Strongly contrasted to Wallace's open-handedness when he was with his friends was the strict economy Martie was obliged to practise in her housekeeping. She went to market herself, as the spring came on, heaping her little purchases at Margar's feet in the coach. Teddy danced and chattered beside her, neighbours stopped to smile at the baby. At the fruit carts, the meat market, the grocery, Martie pondered and planned. Oranges had gone up, lamb had gone up—dear, dear, dear!
Sitting at the grocery counter, she would rearrange her menus.
"Butter fifty—my, that is high! Hasn't the new butter come in? I had better have half a pound, I think. And the beans, and the onions, yes. Let me see—how do you sell the canned asparagus—that's too much. Send me those things, Mr. O'Brien, and I'll see what I can get in the market."
All about her, in the heart-warming spring sunshine, other women were mildly lamenting, mildly bartering. Martie's brain was still busily milling, as she wheeled the coach back through the checkered sun and shade of the elevated train. She would bump the coach down into the area, carefully loading her arms with small packages, catching Margar to her shoulder.
Panting, the perspiration breaking out on her forehead, she would enter the dining room.
"Take her, Isabeau! My arms are breaking! Whew!—it is HOT! Not now, Teddy, you can't have anything until lunch time. Amuse her a minute, Isabeau, I can't take her until—I get—my breath! I had to change dinner; he had no liver. I got veal for veal loaf; Mr. Bannister likes that; and stuffed onions, and the pie, and baked potatoes. Make tea. Put that down, Teddy, you can't have that. Now, my blessedest girl, come to your mother! She's half asleep now; I'll change her and put her out for her nap!"
The baby fed and asleep, Ted out again, Martie would serve Wallace's breakfast herself rather than interrupt the steady thumping of irons in the kitchen. She tried to be patient with his long delays.
"How's the head?" she would ask, sitting opposite him with little socks to match, or boxed strawberries to stem.
"Oh, rotten! I woke up when the baby did."
"But, Wallie—that was seven o'clock! You've been asleep since."
"Just dozing. I heard you come in!"
"Well, I think I'll move her clothes out of that room. Aren't your eggs good?"
"Nope. They taste like storage. I should think we could get good eggs now!"
"They OUGHT to be good!"
"You ought to get a telephone in here," he might return sourly. "Then you could deal with some decent place! I hate the way women pinch and squeeze to save five cents; there's nothing in it!"
Silence. Martie's face flushed, her fingers flew.
"What are you doing to-day?" she might ask, after a while.
"Oh, I'll go down town, I guess. Never can tell when something'll break. Bates told me that Foster was anxious to see me. He says they're having a deuce of a time getting people for their plays. Bates says to stick 'em for a couple of hundred a week."
Martie placed small hope in such a hint, but she was glad he could. When he had sauntered away, she would go on patiently, mixing the baby's bottles, picking toys from the floor, tying and re-tying Ted's shoe-laces. This was a woman's life. Martha Bannister was not a martyr; nobody in the city could stop to help or pity her.
The hot summer shut down upon them, and the baby drooped, even though Martie was careful to wheel her out into the shade by the river every day. She herself drooped, staring at life helplessly, hopelessly. In March there would be a third child.
After a restless night, the sun woke her, morning after morning, glaring into her room at six. Wearily, languidly, she dressed the twisting and leaping Teddy, fastened little Margar, with her string of spools and her shabby double-gown, in the high-chair. The kitchen smelled of coffee, of grease; the whole neighbourhood smelled in the merciless heat of the summer day. Had that meat spoiled; was the cream just a little turned?
Ted, always absorbed in wheels, pulleys, and nails, would be in an interrogative mood.
"Mother, could a giant step across the East River?"
"What was it, dear?—the water was running; Mother didn't hear you."
"Could a giant step across a river?"
"Why, I suppose he could. Don't touch that, Ted."
"Could he step across the whole WORLD?"
"I don't know. Here's your porridge, dear. Listen——"
For Wallace was shouting. Martie would go to the bedroom door, to interrogate the tousle-headed, heaving form under the bedclothes.
"Say, Martie, isn't there an awful lot of noise out there?"
Martie would stand silent for a moment.
"You can't blame the children for chattering, Wallace."
"Well, you tell Ted he'll catch it, if I hear any more of it!"
She would go lifelessly back to the kitchen, to sip a cup of scalding black coffee. Margar went into her basket for her breakfast, banging the empty bottle rapturously against the wicker sides as a finale.
"Wash both their faces, Isabeau," Martie would murmur, flinging back her head with a long, weary sigh. "There are no buttons on this suit; I'll have to go back into Mr. Bannister's room—too bad, for he's asleep again! Yes, dear, you may go to market and push the carriage—DON'T ask Mother that again, Ted! I always let you go, and you ALWAYS push Sister." Her voice would sink to a whisper, and her face fall into her hands. "Oh, Isabeau, I do feel so wretched. Sometimes it seems as if——However!" and with a sudden desperate courage, Martie would rally herself. "However, it's all in the day's work! Run down to the sidewalk, Ted, and Mother'll be right down with the baby!"
Coming in an hour later perhaps, Wallace, better-natured now, would call her again.
"Come in, Mart! Hell-oo! Is that somebody that loves her Daddy?"
"She's just going to have her bottle, Wallie" Martie would fret.
"Well, here! Let me give it to her." Sitting up in bed, his nightgown falling open at the throat, Margar's father would hold out big arms for the child.
"No, you can't. She'll never go to sleep at that rate; and if she misses her nap, that upsets her whole day!"
"Lord, but you are in a grouch, Mart. For Heaven's sake, cheer up!" Wallace, rumpling and kissing his daughter, would give her a reproachful look.
Martie's face always darkened resentfully at such a speech. Sometimes she did not answer.
"Perhaps if YOU couldn't sleep," she might say in a low, shaken tone, "and you felt as miserable as I do, you might not be so cheerful!"
"Oh, well, I know! But you know it's nothing serious, and it won't last. Forget it! After all, your mother had four children, and mine had seven, and they didn't make such a fuss!"
He did not mean to be unkind, she would remind herself. And what he said was true, after all. There was nothing more to say.
"Wallie, have you any money for the laundry?"
"Oh, Lord! How much is it?"
"Two dollars and thirteen cents; four weeks now."
"Well, when does he come?"
"To-day."
"Well, you tell him that I'll step in to-morrow and pay the whole thing. I'm going to see Richards to-day; I won't be home to dinner."
"But I thought you were going to see that man in the Bronx, about the moving picture job to-morrow?"
"Yes, I am. What about it?"
"Nothing. Only, Wallie, if you have dinner with Mr. Richards and all those men, you know—you know you may not feel like—like getting up early to-morrow!" Martie, hesitating in the doorway with the baby, wavered between tact and truth.
"Why don't you say I'll be drunk, while you're about it?"
The ugly tone would rouse everything that was ugly in response.
"Very well, I WILL say that, if you insist!" The slamming door ended the conversation; Martie trembled as she put the child to bed. Presently Isabeau would come to her to say noncommittally, but with watchful, white-rimmed eyes, that Mist' Bans'ter he didn' want no breakfuss, he jus' take hisse'f off. For the rest of the day, Martie carried a heart of lead.
Mentally, morally, physically, the little family steadily descended. With Martie too ill to do more than drag herself through the autumn days, Wallace idle and ugly, Isabeau overworked and discontented, and bills accumulating on every side, there was no saving element left. Desperately the wife and mother plodded on; the children must have milk and bread, the rent-collector must be pacified if not satisfied. Everything else was unimportant. Her own appearance mattered nothing, the appearance of the house mattered nothing. She pinned the children's clothing when their buttons disappeared; she slipped a coat wearily over her house-dress, and went to the delicatessen store five minutes before dinner-time. She was thin enough now,—Martie, who had always longed to be thin. Sometimes, sitting on the side of an unmade bed, with a worn little shirt of Ted's held languidly in her hands, she would call the maid.
"Isabeau! Hasn't Teddy a clean shirt?"
"No, MA'AM! You put two them shirts in yo' basket 'n' says how you's going to fix 'em!"
"I must get at those shirts," Martie would muse helplessly. "Come, Ted, look what you're doing! Pay attention, dear!"
"Man come with yo meat bill, Mis' Ban'ster," Isabeau might add, lingering in the doorway. "Ah says you's OUT."
"Thank you, Isabeau." Perhaps Martie would laugh forlornly. "Never mind—things must change! We can't go on THIS way!"
Suddenly, she was ill. Without warning, without the slip or stumble or running upstairs that she was quite instinctively avoiding, the accident befell. Martie, sobered, took to her bed, and sent Isabeau flying for Dr. Converse, the old physician whose pleasant wife had often spoken to Teddy in the market. Strange—strange, that she who so loved children should be reduced now to mere thankfulness that the little life was not to be, mere gratitude for an opportunity to lie quiet in bed!
"For I suppose I should stay in bed for a few days?" Martie asked the doctor. Until she was told she might get up. Very well, but he must remember that she had a husband and two children to care for, and make that soon.
Dr. Converse did not smile in answer. After a while she knew why. The baffling weakness did not go, the pain and restlessness seemed to have been hers forever. Day after day she lay helpless; while Isabeau grumbled, Margar fretted, and Teddy grew noisy and unmanageable. Wallace was rarely at home, the dirt and confusion of the house rode Martie's sick brain like a nightmare. She told herself, as she lay longing for an appetizing meal, an hour's freedom from worry, that there was a point beyond which no woman might be expected to bear things, that if life went on in this way she must simply turn her face to the wall and die.
Ghost-white, she was presently on her feet. The unbearable had been borne. She was getting well again; ridden with debts, and as shabby and hopeless as it could well be, the Bannister family staggered on. Money problems buzzed about Martie's eyes like a swarm of midges: Isabeau had paid this charge of seventy cents, there was a drug bill for six dollars and ten cents—eighty cents, a dollar and forty cents, sixty-five cents—the little sums cropped up on all sides.
Martie took pencil and paper, and wrote them all down. The hideous total was two hundred and seventeen dollars on the last day of October. But there would be rent again on the eleventh—
Her bright head went suddenly down on her arms. Oh, no—no—no! It couldn't be done. It was all too hard, too bewildering—
Suddenly, looking at the pencilled sums, the inspiration came. Was it a memory of those days long ago in Monroe, when she had calculated so carefully the cost of coming on to the mysterious fairyland of New York? As carefully now she began to count the cost of going home.
It was five years since she had seen her own people; and in that time she had carried always the old resentful feeling that she would rather die than turn to Pa for help! But she knew better now; her children should not suffer because of that old girlish pride.
Her mother was gone. Len and his wife, one of the lean, tall Gorman girls, were temporarily living with Pa in the old place. Sally had four children, Elizabeth, Billy, Jim, and Mary, and lived in the old Mussoo place near Dr. Ben. Joe Hawkes was studying medicine, Lydia kept house for Pa, of course, and Sally and her father were reconciled. "We just started talking to each other when Ma was so ill," wrote Sally, "and now he thinks the world and all of the children."
All these changes had filtered to Martie throughout the years. Only a few weeks ago a new note had been sounded. Pa had asked Sally if she ever heard of her sister; had said that Mary Hawkes was like her Aunt Martie, "the cunningest baby of them all."
Wild with hope, Sally had written the beloved sister. It was as if all these years of absence had been years of banishment to Sally. Martie recognized the unchanging Monroe standard.
She got Sally's letter now, and re-read it. If Pa could send her a few hundreds, if she could get the children into Lydia's hands, in the old house in the sunken garden, if Teddy and Margar could grow up in the beloved fogs and sunshine, the soft climate of home, then how bravely she could work, how hopefully she could struggle to get a foothold in the world for them! She wrote simply, lovingly, penitently, to her father—She was convalescent after serious illness; there were two small children; her husband was out of work; could he forgive her and help her? In the cold, darkening days, she went about fed with a secret hope, an abounding confidence.
But she held the letter a fortnight before sending it. If her father refused her, she was desperate indeed. Planning, planning, planning, she endured the days. Wallace was not well; wretched with grippe, he spent almost the entire day in bed when he was at home, dressing at four o'clock and going out of the house without a farewell. Sometimes, for two or three nights a week, Martie did not know where he was; his friends kept him in money, and made him feel himself a deeply wronged and unappreciated man. She could picture him in bars, in cafes, in hot hotel rooms seriously talking over a card-table, boasting, threatening.
She dismissed Isabeau Eato with a promise that the girl accepted ungraciously.
"If I had the money Isabeau, you should have it; you know that!"
"Yas'm. Hit's what dey all says'm."
"You SHALL have it," Martie promised, with hot cheeks. She breathed easier when the girl was gone. She told the grocer that she had written her father, and that his bills should be paid; she reminded the big rosy man that she had been ill. He listened without comment, cleaning a split thumb-nail. The story was not a new one.
No answer came to her letter, and a sick suspicion that no answer would come began to trouble her. December was passing. Teddy was careful to tell her just what he wanted from Santa Claus. On Christmas Eve she asked Wallace, as he was silently going out, for some money.
"I want to get Ted SOMETHING for Christmas, Wallie."
"What does he want?"
"Well, of course he wants a coaster and skates, but that's absurd. I thought some sort of a gun—he's gun-mad, and perhaps a book of fairy-tales."
With no further comment her husband gave her a five-dollar-bill, and went on his way. She saw that he had other bills, and went impulsively after him.
"Wallie! Could you let me have a little more? I do need it so!"
Still silent, he took the little roll from his pocket, and gave her another five dollars. She saw still a third, and a one dollar bill.
But this was more than her wildest hopes. Joyfully, she went, shabby and cold, through the happy streets. She walked four blocks to a new market, and bought bread and butter and salt codfish and a candy cane. She went into a department store, leaving Teddy to watch the coach on the sidewalk, and got him the gun and the book. She gave her grocer four, her butcher three dollars, with a "Merry Christmas!" Did both men seem a little touched, a little pitying, or was it just the holiday air? The streets were crowded, the leaden sky low and menacing; they would have a white Christmas.
Teddy hung up his stocking at dark. The big things, he explained, would have to go on the floor.
"What big things, my heart?" Martie was toasting bread, eying the browned fish cakes with appetite.
"Well, the coaster or the skates!" he elucidated off-hand.
His mother's breast rose on a long sigh. She came to put one arm about him, as she knelt beside him on the floor.
"Teddy, dear, didn't Mother tell you that old Santa Claus is poor this year? He has so many, many little boys to go to! Wouldn't my boy rather that they should all have something, than that some poor little fellows should have nothing at all?" She stopped, sick at heart, for the child's lip was trembling, and a hot tear fell on her hand.
"But—but I've been good, Mother!" he stammered with a desperate effort at self-control.
Well, if he could not be brave, she must be. She began to tell him about going to California, to Grandfather's house. Later she put the orange, the apple, the gun, with a triangle puzzle given away at the drug store, a paper cow from the dairy, and five cents' worth of pressed figs, into the little dangling stocking, placed the book beside it, and hung the candy cane over all. Mrs. Converse, the doctor's wife, had sent a big flannel duck, obviously second-hand, but none the less wonderful for that, for Margar; Teddy had not seen it, so it would be one more Christmas touch!
And at eight o'clock, as she was putting her kitchen in order, a tired driver appeared, clumsily engineering something through the narrow hall; a great coaster, its brave red and gold showing through the flimsy, snow-wet wrappings.
"Teddy from Dad," Martie, bewildered, read on the card. Not to the excited child himself would it bring the joy it gave his mother. Poor Wallace—always generous! He had gone straight from her plea for the boy's Christmas to spend his money for this. She hoped he would come home to-morrow; that they might spend the day together. Some of the shops would be open for a few hours; if he brought home money, she could manage a chicken, and one of the puddings from the French confectioner's—
Another ring at the bell? Martie wiped her hands, and went again to the door. A telegram—
She tore and crumpled the wet yellow paper. The wonderful words danced before her eyes: