Over, however, the episode was not, and after a few days Martie
realized with a sort of shame that she did not wish it to be over. She
could not keep her memory away from the enchanted hours when John's
presence had lent a glory to the dark old house and the prosaic
village. She said with a pang: "It was only yesterday--it was only
two--only three--days ago, that he was here, that all the warmth and
delight of it was mine!"
The burning lightness and dryness seemed still to possess her: she was
hardly conscious of the days she was living, for the poignancy and
power of the remembered days. The blue taffeta dress had lost its
charm, everything had grown strangely dull and poor.
She passed the lumber-yard with a quickened heart; she climbed the hill
alone, and leaned on the fence where they had leaned, and let the full,
splendid recollection sweep across her. She knelt in church and prayed
that there would be a letter from Dean Silver, saying that Adele was
dead--
A little cottage on a river bank in Connecticut became her Heaven. She
gave it an old flag-stone walk, she sprinkled the green new grass of an
Eastern spring with daisies. She dreamed of a simple room, where
breezes and sunshine came by day, and the cool moon by night, and where
she and John laughed over their bread and cheese.
So far it was more joy than pain. But there swiftly came a time when
pain alone remained. Life became almost intolerable.
Clifford, coming duly to see her every evening, never dreamed of the
thoughts that were darkening her blue eyes. He sat in the big chair
opposite Malcolm's, and they talked about real estate, and about the
various business ventures of the village. At nine o'clock Malcolm went
stiffly upstairs, attended by Lydia, and then Martie took her father's
seat, and Clifford hitched his chair nearer.
He would ask her what she was sewing, and sometimes she laughed,
spreading the ruffle of a petticoat over her knee, and refused to
consider his questions. They talked of little things pertaining to
their engagement: Martie was sure somebody suspected it, Clifford had
been thinking of the Yellowstone for a wedding trip, and had brought
folders to study. Rarely they touched upon politics, or upon the
questions of the day.
His opinions were already stiff-jointed, those of an elderly man. He
did not believe in all this prohibition agitation, he believed that a
gentleman always knew where to stop in the matter of wine. What right
had a few temperance fanatics to vote that seven hundred acres of his,
Clifford Frost's property, should be made valueless because they
happened to be planted to grapes?
He disapproved of this agitation concerning the social evil. There had
always been women in that life, and there always would be. They were in
it because they liked it. They didn't have to choose it. Why didn't
they go into somebody's kitchen, and save money, and have good homes,
if they wanted to? He told Martie a little story that he thought was
funny of one of these women. It was the sort of story that a man might
tell the widow who was to be his wife. It made Martie want to cry.
She had always felt herself too ignorant to form an opinion of these
things. But she found herself rapidly forming opinions now, and they
were not Clifford's opinions.
Three days after his departure, Dean Silver wrote her briefly. John was
"taking it very quietly, but didn't seem to know just what had
happened." He, Dean, hoped to get the younger man safely on board the
vessel before this mood broke. He had therefore engaged passage on the
Nippon Maru, for Thursday, four days ahead. They were all in San
Francisco, Mrs. Silver and the little girl had come down with them, and
John was interested in the steamer, and seemed perfectly docile. He
never mentioned Martie.
This letter threw her into an agony of indecision. There were a few
moments when she planned to go down to the city herself, and see
him--hear him again. Just a few minutes of John's eyes and his voice,
of the intoxication of being so passionately loved--!
She put aside this impulse, and went to write a telegram. But her hand
trembled as she did so, and her soul sickened. What could she offer
him, what but pain and fresh renunciation?
She had made many mistakes in her life. But through them all a certain
underlying principle had kept her safe. Could she fling that all aside
now; that courage that had made her, a frightened girl of twenty, come
with her unborn baby, away from the man whose marriage to her was in
question, the faith that had helped her to kneel calm and brave beside
the child who had gone?
To do that would make it all wasted and wrong. To do that would be to
lose the little she had brought from the hard years. She knew that she
would not do it. She put it all away, when the constant thought of it
arose, as weakness and madness.
Thursday came, and Martie, walking toward Sally's house, where she and
Teddy always had their Thursday supper, bought a paper, and read that
the Nippon Maru had duly sailed.
On the way she met Teddy himself--he had been to the store for Aunt
Sally--with 'Lizabeth and Billy; he was happy, chattering and curveting
about her madly in the warm twilight. He was happy here, and safe, she
told herself. And the Nippon Maru had sailed--
Sally was in her kitchen, her silky hair curled in damp rings on her
forehead. She had on her best gown, a soft blue gingham, for Sally had
just been elected to the club, and had been there this afternoon. She
had turned up the skirt of her dress, and taken off the frilled white
collar, laying it on a shelf until the dinner fuss and hurry should be
over. Mary was sitting in the high-chair, clean and expectant, Jim was
hammering nails in porch.
The children put down their bread and butter, Sally kissed her sister.
Martie began to butter swiftly, and spread it with honey.
"San Francisco paper, Mart?"
"Yes." Martie did not look up. "Mr. Dryden and Mr. Silver sailed this
morning," she said.
"Oh, really?" Sally turned a flushed face from the stove. "Lyd was
talking about him to-day, and the way he acted, carrying you off for a
walk, or something," Sally pursued cheerfully. "And until she happened
to say that his wife is living, I declare I was frightened to death for
fear he was in love with you, Mart!"
Martie stared at her in simple bewilderment. Could it be possible that
Sally had seen nothing of the fevers and heartaches of this memorable
week? Her innocent allusion to the night of their walk--only a week
ago!--brought Martie an actual pang.
For just one other such evening, for just one more talk, Martie was
beginning to feel she would go mad. They had said so little then, they
had known so little what this new separation would mean!
And Sally knew nothing of it. A sudden lonely blankness fell upon
Martie's soul; it mattered nothing to Lydia and Rose and Sally that
John Dryden loved her. It mattered more than life to her.
What use to talk of it? How flat the words would seem for that memory
of everything high and splendid. Yet she felt the need of speech. She
must talk of him to some one, now when it was too late: when he was out
on the ocean: when she was perhaps never to see him again.
"Sis," she said, setting the filled plate in the centre of the table,
"do you specially remember him?"
Sally had chanced to come to the old home for just a minute on the
morning of her talk with John in the garden. Sally nodded now alertly.
"Certainly I do! He seemed a dear," she said cordially.
"I wish they had not come!" Martie said sombrely.
"You--wish--?" Sally's anxious eyes flashed to her face.
"That they had never come!"
"Oh, Mart! Oh, Mart, why?"
"Because--because I think perhaps I should not marry Cliff, feeling as
I do to John!" Martie said desperately.
She had not quite meant it when she said it: her sick heart was merely
trying to reach Sally's concern, it frightened her now to feel that it
was almost true.
"WHAT!" Sally whispered.
She was roused now: too much roused. Martie began hastily to reassure
Sally, and herself, too.
"Oh, I will, Sally. Of course I will. And nobody will ever know this
except you and me!"
"Martie, dear, he DOES care then?"
"Oh, yes, he cares!"
"But, Mart--that's terrible!"
Martie laughed ruefully.
"It's miserable!" she agreed, her eyes watering even while she smiled.
"He knew about Cliff?" Sally questioned.
"Oh, yes!"
"And his own wife is alive?"
"Oh, yes!"
"Well, then?" Sally concluded anxiously. "What does he want--what does
he expect you to do?"
To this Martie only answered unhappily:
"I don't know."
Sally, staring at her in distress, was silent. But as Martie suddenly
seemed to put the subject aside, and called the children for supper,
she turned back to the stove in relief. Presently they were all
gathered about the kitchen table, Martie encouraging the children, as
usual, to launch into the conversation, and laughing in quite her usual
merry manner at their observations. She took Mary into her lap,
ruffling the curly little head with her kisses, and whispering
endearments into the small ear. But Sally noticed that she was not
eating.
Later, when they had put away the hot, clean dishes, and made the
kitchen orderly for the night, Sally touched somewhat awkwardly upon
the delicate topic.
"Too bad--about Mr. Dryden," Sally ventured. Martie, at the open
doorway, gave no sign of hearing. Her splendid bronze head was resting
against the jamb, she was looking down the shabby little littered
backyard to the river. And suddenly it seemed to Sally that restless,
lovely Martie did not really belong to Monroe, that this mysterious
sister of hers never had belonged to Monroe, that Martie's well-groomed
hair and hands were as little in place here as Martie's curious
aloofness from the town affairs, as Martie's blue eyes through which
her hungry soul occasionally looked. "I'm awfully sorry for him," Sally
went on, a little uncertainly. "But what can you do? He must realize--"
"He realizes nothing!" Martie said, half-smiling, half-sighing.
"He's not a Catholic, then?"
"No. He's--nothing."
"But you explained to him? And you told him about Cliff?"
"Yes; he knew about Cliff." But Martie's tone was so heavy, and the
fashion in which she raised a hand to brush the hair from her white
forehead was so suggestive of pain, that Sally felt a little tremor of
apprehension.
"Martie--you don't--CARE, too?" she asked fearfully.
"With every fibre of my soul and body!" Martie answered, in a low,
moody voice from the doorway. "Sally--Sally--Sally--to be free!" she
went on, speaking, as Sally was vaguely aware, more for the relief of
her own heart than for any effect on her sister. "To have him free! We
always liked each other--loved each other, I think. What a life--what
joy we would have! Oh, I can't bear it. I can't bear to have the days
go by, and the years go by, and never--never see him or hear him again!
I can't help Cliff; I can't help John's wife; I can't help it if he
seems odd and boyish and different to other people--! That's what makes
him John--what he is!"
"I never dreamed it," Sally marvelled.
"I never dreamed it myself, a week ago. I always had a sort of special
feeling toward John, and I knew he had toward me. But I've been a
romantic sort of fool all my life--my Prince Charming had to come
dashing up on a white horse--I didn't recognize him because he was a
little clerk in a furniture store, and married to the stupidest woman
the Lord ever made!"
Sally laughed in spite of herself. Martie turned from the dimness of
the doorway, and came into the hot, clean little room. She sat down at
the table, and spread her arms across it, locking her white hands.
"It's all so funny. Sally," she said childishly. "A week ago, I was
sailing along, humbly grateful and happy because Cliff loved me. To-day
John Dryden sails for a year in the Orient. And between those few days
he drifts in here just long enough to bring my plans all tumbling about
my ears."
"I'm sorry!" Sally, busily setting bread, could say nothing more
significant. But as Martie remained silent, brooding eyes on her own
fingers, the older sister added timidly: "Do--do you think perhaps
you'll get over that--that feeling?"
"That is my only hope!" Martie said courageously.
"And after all," Sally went on, eagerly, "what could he offer you?
Cliff is--he's devoted to you, and he's steadiness itself! And I do
believe you would be perfectly contented if you just put the other
thing out of your mind, and tried to make the greatest happiness
possible out of your new life! Lydia and Pa, and all of us, and Ruth
and Teddy are all so happy about it And you know there's no safety like
the safety of being married to a good man!"
Martie laughed.
"You're quite right, Sally! But," she added, her face growing serious
again, "the terrible thing is this: If I marry Cliff, I do it--just a
LITTLE--with other things in view. The children, as you say, and the
good opinion of the town, and Pa's happiness, and Len's prosperity, and
the pleasure of being mistress of the old house, and dear knows what!
Of course I LIKE Cliff--but I tell you frankly that I'm looking even
now to the time when our honeymoon shall be over, and the first
strangeness of--well, of belonging to him is over!"
Sally's face was flaming. She had stopped working, and both sisters
faced each other consciously.
"In other words," smiled Martie, "I wish I had been married to him ten
years ago, and by this time had little Sally and Cliffy--"
"Oh, dearest, I do hope there are children!" Sally said eagerly.
"I hope so, too!" Martie said simply. And with suddenly misting eyes
Sally heard her say softly, half to herself, "I want another girl!"
Then her lip trembled, and to the older sister's consternation she
began to cry, with her shining head laid on her arms. "I don't know
w-w-what to do, Sally!" she sobbed. "I don't know what is right! I know
I'm desperately tired of worrying and fretting and being criticised! I
don't see why it should be my life that is always being upset and
disorganized, while other women go on placidly having children and
giving dinners!"
"Perhaps because you are so different from other? women?" Sally
suggested, somewhat timidly. She was not sure that Martie would like
this.
But Martie gave her a grateful glance, and immediately dried her eyes
with a brisk evidence of returning self-control.
"Well!" she said sensibly. "It is that way, anyhow, and I have to make
the best of it. I married foolishly, in some ways, and I paid the
price--nobody knows what it was! Then I came back here, and had really
worked out a happy life for myself, when Cliff came along, and no
sooner was I adjusted to Cliff--to the thought of marriage again, when
John upset it all!"
"The happiness of the woman who marries Cliff ought to be pretty safe,"
offered Sally.
"Yes, I know it. But Sally," Martie said, looking at her sister
questioningly, "sometimes I feel that I don't dare risk it! I can't
marry John, but I can't seem to--to let him go, either. I know what
madness that visit was, and yet--and yet every minute that we were
together was like--I don't know--like swimming in a sea of gold! I
didn't know what I wore or ate in those days! Pa and Lyd--other people
didn't seem to exist! I never believed before that any one could feel
as strange--as bewildered and excited and happy--as I did then. It was
like being hungry and satisfied at the same time. It was just like
being under a spell! His voice, Sally, and the way he speaks of men and
books--so surely, and yet in that boyish way--and his hands, and the
way he smiles through his lashes--I can't forget one instant of it! We
got breakfast together; I can't go into the kitchen now without
remembering it, and longing to have him there again, whipping eggs and
hunting about for the butter, while all the time we were laughing and
talking so wonderfully! It's that--loving that way, that makes life
worth while, Sally. Nothing else counts! Nothing that we did together
seemed insignificant, and nothing that I do without him is worth
while--I can't--can't--can't let him go!"
Sally was frightened as her sister's head went down again. She could
think of nothing to say. "I can't help thinking that our life would be
that," Martie went on presently, raising her sombre face to rest it on
one hand, her elbows propped on the table. "Everything would be
wonderful, just because we love each other so! He writes, and I would
write----"
"Feeling as you do," Sally said after a troubled silence, "I would
really say that you oughtn't to marry any one else, Mart. But even if
Cliff gave you up, how could you marry a divorced man?"
"Oh, Sally--don't keep reiterating that it's impossible!" Martie said
with a flash of impatience. "I know it--I know it--but that doesn't
make it any easier to bear! You women who have so much can't
realize----"
"You have Teddy," Sally suggested, in the silence.
"Yes, I have Teddy--God bless him!" his mother said, with a sudden
tender smile. And she seemed to see a line of little Teddies, playing
with Grandma Curley's spools, glancing fearfully at the "Cold Lairs,"
walking sturdily beside Margar's shabby coach, chattering to a quiet,
black-clad mother on the overland train. She had her gallant, gay
little Teddy still. "I don't know why I talk so recklessly, Sally," she
said sensibly. "It's only that I am so worried--and troubled. I don't
know what I ought to do! Suppose I tell Cliff frankly, and we break the
engagement? Then John will come back, and there'll be all that to go
over and over!"
"But that's--just selfishness," said Sally, spreading a checked blue
towel neatly over her pan of dough, and adding last touches to the now
orderly kitchen.
"Oh, men are all selfish!" Martie conceded. "Every one's selfish! Cliff
quite placidly broke Lydia's heart years ago; Rose and Rodney between
them nearly broke mine. But now Cliff wants something from me, and Rose
realizes that she has something to gain, and it's roses, roses all the
way."
"Well, that's life, Mart," submitted the older sister.
"If I had it all to do over again," Martie mused, "I wouldn't come back
after Wallace's death. Teddy and I could have made our way comfortably
in New York. By coming, I have more or less obliged myself to accept
the Monroe point of view----"
"Oh, but Mart, we've had such wonderful times together, and it means so
much to me to have you like Joe and the children!" said Sally.
"Yes," Martie's arm went about her sister, "that's been the one
definite gain, Sally, to see you so happy and prosperous, and to
realize that life is going so pleasantly for you. As the years go by,
Joe'll gain steadily; he's that sort; and Dr. Hawkes's children won't
have to envy any children in Monroe. But, oh, Sis--if I could get away!"
The old cry, Sally thought, as she anxiously studied the beautiful,
discontented face.
Presently Clifford came, to take his future wife home, and Joe came
back from the hospital in the Ford, and there was much friendly talk
and laughter. But Sally watched her sister a little wistfully that
evening; didn't Martie think this was all pleasant--all worth while?