Martie, the Unconquered

by Kathleen Thompson Norris

Amazingly, the money flowed in. Martie told them one night at dinner that she had always fancied a boarding-house was a place where a slap-heeled woman climbed bleak stairs to tell starving geniuses that their rent was overdue. Mrs. Curley had laughed comfortably at the picture.

"You can always make money feeding people," she had asserted. John had given Martie a serious look after his laugh.

"Geniuses don't HAVE to starve," he had submitted thoughtfully.

"There's always plenty of work in the world, if people will do it!" Adele had added. "Dear me, I often wonder if the people who talk charity—charity—charity—realize that it's all two thirds laziness and dirt. I don't care HOW poor I was, I know that I would keep my little house nice; you don't have to have money to do that! But you'll always hear this talk of the unemployed—when any employer will tell you the hard thing is to get trustworthy men! The other day Ethel was asking me to join some society or other—take tickets for an actors' benefit, I think it was—and I begged to be excused. I told her we didn't have any money to spare for that sort of thing! Genius, indeed! Why don't they get jobs?"

"Jobs in a furniture store, eh, John?" Martie smiled. The man answered her smile sturdily.

"It isn't so rotten!" he said.

Her letters to-night, for there were two in the special delivery stamped envelope, were from Lydia and Sally. Sally had written often to her sister during the years, and Martie was fairly in touch with Monroe events: the young Hawkeses had three babies now, and Grace had twins. Rose had been ill, and had lost her hopes a second time, but she was well now, and she and Rodney had been to New York. People said that the Parkers were coining money, and Rose had absolutely everything she wanted. Colonel Frost was dead. Miss Frost looked like death—Martie had smiled at the old phrase—and Grandma Kelly was dead; Father Martin was quoted as saying that she was a saint if ever there was one. George Patterson had been sued by a girl in Berkeley, and Monroe was of the opinion that the Pattersons never would hold up their heads again. Pa and Len were in some real estate venture together, Len had talked Pa into it at last. And finally, Sally and the children were well, and Joe wrote her every day.

This last sentence had puzzled Martie; where was Joe Hawkes then, that he must write every day to his wife? She had intended to write Sally in the old affectionate, confidential strain, and ask all the questions that rose now and then in her thoughts of Monroe. But she had not written for months, and now—now this.

She grasped the news in the tear-stained sheets at a first glance. Her mother was dead. Martie repeated the words to herself with a stupid realization that she could not grasp their meaning. The old dark house in the sunken square would know that slender, gentle presence no more. She had never felt the parting final; a chill wind from some forgotten country smote her. Her mother was dead, her child was growing up, her husband had failed her.

Sally's letter was brief, restrained, and tender. Martie could read Sally's development in the motherly lines. But Lydia had written in a sort of orgy of grief. Ma had "seemed like herself all Wednesday," and had gone with Lydia to see old Mrs. Mussoo, and had eaten her dinner that night, and the next day, Thursday, she had come down as usual to breakfast, and so on and on for ten long days, every hour of which was treasured now in Lydia's heart. "And poor Pa," wrote the older sister, "I must be all in all to him now; I never can marry now. And oh, Martie, I couldn't help wishing, for your sake, that you could feel that you had never, even as a thoughtless girl, caused our dear angel an hour of grief and pain! You must say to yourself that she forgave you and loved you through it all ..."