Martie, the Unconquered

by Kathleen Thompson Norris

"It was killing," said Mrs. Dryden, establishing herself comfortably by the radiator. She was a slender, bright-eyed woman of perhaps thirty, whose colouring ran to cool browns: clear brown eyes, brown hair prettily dressed, a pale brown skin under which a trace of red only occasionally appeared. To-day her tailor-made suit was brown, and about her throat was a narrow boa of some brown fur. "Here, Teddy, take these to your mother," she added, extending a crushed box half full of chocolates. "The place was PACKED," she went on, crunching. "And, my dear!—coming out we were right CLOSE to Doris Beresford, in the most divine coat I ever laid eyes on! I suppose they all like to have an idea of what's going on at the other theatres. I don't believe she uses one bit of make-up; wonderful skin! There was such a mob in the car it was something terrible. A man crushed up against Ethel; she said she thought he'd break her arm! I got a seat; I don't know how it is, but I always do. We'd been running, and I suppose my colour was high, and a man got up IMMEDIATELY. Nice—I always thank them. I think that's the least you can do. Ethel said he sat and stared at me all the way up to Fifty-ninth, where he got off. He was an awfully nice-looking fellow; I'll tell you what he looked like: a young doctor. Don't you know those awfully CLEAN-looking men——"

Martie, now changing Teddy's little suit for dinner, let the stream run on unchecked. Mrs. Curley, who did not particularly fancy Mrs. Dryden, had gone upstairs, but Martie really liked to listen to Adele. Presently she turned on the lights, and led Teddy into the Cold Lairs, to have his face washed. Adele reached for the evening paper, and began to peruse it idly. When Martie came out of the bath-room, it was to hear a knock at the door.

"It's John!" predicted Adele. A moment later her husband came into the room. Like his wife, he was cold and wet and rosy from the street, but he had evidently been upstairs, for he wore his old house-coat and dry slippers, and had brushed his hair. He was younger than Adele by three or four years, but he looked like a boy of twenty; squarely built, not tall, but giving an impression of physical power nevertheless. Martie had first thought his face odd, then interesting; now she found it strangely attractive. His eyes, between sandy lashes and under thick sandy brows, were of a sea-blue in colour, his head was covered with a cap of thick, lustreless, sand-coloured hair. Something odd, elfin, whimsical, in his crooked smile lent an actual charm to his face, for Martie at least. She told him he looked like Pan.

Early in their acquaintance she had asked him if he were not a Dane, not a Norwegian, if he had not viking blood? She said that he suggested sagas and berserkers and fjords—"not that I am sure what any of those words mean!" His answering laugh had been as wild as a delighted child's. No; he was American-born, of an English father and an Irish mother, he said. He had never been abroad, never been to college, never had any family that he remembered, except Adele. He had meant to be a "merchant sailor"—a term he seemed to like, although it conveyed only a vague impression to Martie—but his lungs hadn't been strong. So he went to Arizona and loafed. And there he met Adele; her mother kept the boarding-house in which he lived, in fact, and there they were married. Adele had a glorious voice and she wanted to come to New York to cultivate it. And then Adele had been ill.

His voice fell reverently when he spoke of this illness. Adele had nearly died. What the hope that had also really died at this time meant to him, Martie could only suspect when she saw him with Teddy. Adele herself told her that she was never strong enough for new hopes.

"We couldn't afford it, of course; so perhaps it was just as well," said Adele one day when she and Martie had come to be good friends, and were confidential. "I felt terribly for a while, because I have a wonderful way with children; I know that myself. They always come to me—funniest thing! Dr. Poole was saying the other day that I had a remarkable magnetism. I said, 'I don't know about THAT,'—and I don't, Martie! I don't think I'm so magnetic, do you—'BUT,' I said, 'I really do seem to have a hold on children!' Jack loves children, too, but he spoils them. I don't believe in letting children run a house; it isn't good for them, and it isn't good for you. Let them have their own toys and treat them as kindly as possible, but——"

John Dryden was a salesman in a furniture house; perhaps the city's finest furniture house. Martie suspected that his pleasant, half-shy, yet definite manner, made him an excellent salesman. He talked to her about his associates, whom he took upon their own valuations, and deeply admired. This one was a "wizard" at figures, and that one had "a deuce of a manner with women." John chuckled over their achievements, but she knew that he himself must be the secret wonder of the place. He might be more or less, but he was certainly not a typical furniture salesman. Sometimes the manager took him to lunch; Martie wondered if he quoted the queer books he read, and made the staid echoes of the club to which they went awake to his pagan laughter.

His extraordinarily happy temperament knew sudden despairs, but they were usually because he had made a "rotten mistake," or because he was "such a fool" about something. He never complained of the stupid daily round; perhaps it was not stupid to him, who always had a book under his arm, and to whom the first snow and the first green leaves were miracles of delight every year. He treated Adele exactly as if she had been an engaging five-year-old, and she had charming childish mannerisms for him alone. He pacified her when she fretted and complained, and was eagerly grateful when her mood was serene. Her prettiness and her little spoiled airs, Martie realized surprisedly, were full of appeal for him.

"You don't mean that—you don't mean that!" he would say to her when she sputtered and raged. He listened absently to her long dissertation upon the persons—and for Adele the world was full of them—who tried to cheat her, or who were insolent to her, and to whom she was triumphantly insolent in return. She found Martie much more sympathetic as a listener.

Toward Martie, too, John soon began to display a peculiar sensitiveness. At first it was merely that she spurred his sense of humour; he began to test the day's events by her laughter. After that her more general opinions impressed him; he watched her at dinner and accepted eagerly her verdict upon political affairs or the books and plays of the hour. She noticed, and was a little touched to notice, that he quoted her weeks after she had expressed herself. He brought her books and they disagreed and argued about them. In summer, with Adele languid under her parasol, and Teddy enchanting in white, they went to the park concerts, or to the various museums, and wrangled about the new Strauss and Debussy, and commented upon the Hals canvases and the art of Meissonier and Detaille.