Martie, the Unconquered. Kathleen Thompson Norris
disappearing into the dining room long enough to lay the tea cups and plates at one end of the big table.
Only a few moments before the little feast was ready, Lydia came rather anxiously into the kitchen. She greeted Rodney smilingly, seizing the first opportunity for an aside to say to Martie:
"Pa's home, Mart. And he doesn't like your having Rod out here. I walked him up to the Tates', but no one was home except Lizzie. Shame! He saw Rodney's cap in the hall—he's in the dining room." Aloud she said cheerfully: "I think this is dreadful—making you work so hard, Rod. Come—tea's nearly ready. You and I'll wait for it in the dining room, like the gentleman and lady we are!"
"Oh, I'm having a grand time!" Rodney laughed. But he allowed himself to be led away. A few minutes later Martie, with despair in her heart, carried the loaded tray into the dining room.
Her father, in one of his bad moods, was sitting by the empty fireplace. The room, in the early autumn twilight, was cold. Len had come in and expected his share of the unfamiliar luxury of tea, and more than his share of the hot toast.
Rodney, unaffected by the atmosphere, gaily busied himself with the tray. Lydia came gently in with an armful of light wood which she laid in the fireplace.
"There is no necessity for a fire," Malcolm said. "I wouldn't light that, my dear."
"I thought—just to take the chill off," Lydia stammered.
Her father shook his head. Lydia subsided.
"We shall be having supper shortly, I suppose?" he asked patiently, looking at a large gold watch. "It's after half-past five now."
"But, Pa," Lydia laughed a little constrainedly, "we never have dinner until half-past six!"
"Oh, on week days—certainly," he agreed stiffly. "On Sundays, unless I am entirely wrong, we sit down before six."
"Len," Martie murmured, "why don't you go make yourself some toast?"
"Don't have to!" Len laughed with his mouth full.
"Here—I'll go out and make some more!" Rodney said buoyantly, catching up a plate. Lydia instantly intervened; this would not do. Pa would be furious. Obviously Martie could not go, because in her absence Pa, Rodney, and Len would either be silent, or say what was better unsaid. Lydia herself went out for a fresh supply of toast.
Martie was grateful, but in misery. Lydia was always slow. The endless minutes wore away, she and Rodney playing with their empty plates, Len also waiting hungrily, her father watching them sombrely. If Len hadn't come in and been so greedy, Martie thought in confused anger, tea would have been safely over by this time; if Pa were not there glowering she might have chattered at her ease with Rodney, no tea hour would have been too long. As it was, she was self-conscious and constrained. The clock struck six. Really it WAS late.
The toast came in; Sally came in demurely at her mother's side. She had rushed out of the shadows to join her mother at the gate, much to Mrs. Monroe's surprise. Conversation, subdued but general, ensued. Martie walked boldly with Rodney to the gate, at twenty minutes past six, and they stood there, laughing and talking, for another ten minutes.
When she went in, it was to face unpleasantness. Her mother, with her bonnet strings dangling, was helping Lydia hastily to remove signs of the recent tea party. Sally was in the kitchen; Len reading opposite his father.
"Come here a minute, Martie," her father called as I the girl hesitated in the hallway. Martie came in and eyed him. "I would like to know what circumstances led to young Parker's being here this afternoon?" he asked.
"Why—we were walking, and I—I suppose I asked him, Pa."
"You SUPPOSE you asked him?"
"Well—I DID ask him."
"Oh, you DID ask him; that's different. You had spoken to your mother about it?"
"No." Martie swallowed. "No," she said again nervously. There was a silence while her father eyed her coldly.
"Then you ask whom you like to the house, do you? Is that the idea? You upset your mother's and your sister's arrangement entirely at your own pleasure?" he suggested presently.
"I didn't think it was so much to ask a person to have a cup of tea!" Martie stammered, with a desperate attempt at self-defense. She felt tears pressing against her eyes. Lydia would have been meek, Sally would have been meek, but Martie's anger was her nearest weapon. It angered her father in turn.
"Well, will you kindly remember in future that your ideas of what to ask, and what not to ask, are not the ideas by which this house is governed?" Malcolm asked magnificently.
"Yes, sir." Martie stirred as if to turn and go.
"One moment," Malcolm said discontentedly. "You thoroughly understand me, do you?"
"Yes, sir." Martie's eyes met Len's discreetly raised over the edge of his book and full of reproachful interest. She went into the kitchen.
The spell of a nervous silence which had held the dining room was broken. Mrs. Monroe and Lydia talked in low tones as they went to and fro; Len shifted his position; Sally coming in with a plate of sliced bread hummed contentedly. Martie appeared in her usual place at supper, not too subdued to win a laugh even from her father with some vivacious imitation of Miss Tate rallying the children for Sunday School. Happiness was bubbling like a spring in her heart.
After dinner, the dishes being piled in the sink to greet Belle on Monday morning, she went to the piano and crashed into "Just a Song at Twilight," and "Oh, Promise Me," and "The Two Grenadiers." These and many more songs were contained in a large, heavy album entitled "Favourite Songs for the Home." Martie had a good voice; not better than Sally's or Lydia's, but Sally and Lydia rarely sang. Martie had sung to her own noisy accompaniment since she was a child; she loved the sound of her own voice. She had a hunger for accomplishment, rattled off the few French phrases she knew with an unusually pure accent, and caught an odd pleasing word or an accurate pronunciation eagerly on the few occasions when lecturers or actors in Monroe gave her an opportunity.
To-night her father, in his library, heard the sweet, true tones of her voice in "Lesbia" and "Believe Me," and remembered his mother singing those same old songs. But when a silence followed he remembered only faulty Martie, awkwardly making Rodney Parker welcome at the most inconvenient time her evil genius could have suggested, and he presently went into the sitting room with the familiar scowl on his face.
On the next Sunday Rodney hired a Roman-nosed, rusty white horse at Beetman's, and for two hours he and Martie drove slowly about. They drove up past the Poor House to the Cemetery, and into the Cemetery itself, where black-clad forms were moving slowly among the graves. The day was cold, with a bleak wind blowing; the headstones looked bare and forlorn.
At half-past three, driving down the Pittsville road, back toward Monroe, Rodney said:
"Why don't you come and have tea at our house, Martie?"
Martie's heart rose on a great spring.
"Why—would your mother—" She stopped short, not knowing quite how to voice her hesitation. Had she expressed exactly what was in her mind she might have said: "First, won't your mother and sisters snub me? And secondly, is it quite correct, from a conventional standpoint, for me to accept your casual invitation?"
"Sure. Mother'll be delighted—come on!" Rodney urged.
"I'd love to!" Martie agreed.
"You know, the beauty about you, Martie, is that you're such a good pal," Rodney said enthusiastically as he drove on. "I've always wanted a pal. You and I like the same things; we're both a little different from the common run, perhaps—I don't want to throw any flowers at us, but that's true—and it's wonderful to me that living here in this hole all your life you're so up-to-date—so darned intelligent!"
This was nectar to Martie's soul. But she had never been indulged so recklessly in personalities before, and she did not quite know how to meet them.