Part 2 (1/2)
Pa.s.sing the bakery, half way down the block, he dropped in, ordered a chocolate ice-cream soda, and chose a seat near the window. As he had expected, it was not long before he saw Rose go across the courthouse yard toward her office on the north side of the square. He liked the swift, easy way in which she walked. She had been walking the first time he had ever seen her, thirteen years before, when her father had led his family uptown from the station, the day of their arrival in Fallon.
Patrick Conroy had come from Sharon, Illinois, to perform the thankless task of starting a weekly newspaper in a town already undernouris.h.i.+ng one. By sheer stubbornness he had at last established it. Twelve hundred subscribers, their little printing jobs, advertisers who bought liberal portions of s.p.a.ce at ten cents an inch--all had enabled him to give his children a living that was a shade better than an existence. He had died less than a year ago, and Martin, like the rest of the community, had supposed the Fallon Independent would be sold or suspended. Instead, as quietly and matter-of-factly as she had filled her dead mother's place in the home while her brothers and sisters were growing up, Rose stepped into her father's business, took over the editors.h.i.+p and with a boy to do the typesetting and presswork, continued the paper without missing an issue. It even paid a little better than before, partly because it flattered Fallon's sense of Christian helpfulness to throw whatever it could in Rose's way, but chiefly because she made the Independent a livelier sheet with double the usual number of ”Personals.”
Yes, decidedly, Rose had force and push. Martin's mind was made up. He would drop into the Independent ostensibly to extend his subscription, but really to get on more intimate terms with the woman whom he had now firmly determined should become his wife. He drew a deep breath of relaxation and finished the gla.s.s of sweetness with that sense of self-conscious sheepishness which most men feel when they surrender to the sticky charms of an ice-cream soda. A few minutes later he stood beside Rose's worn desk.
”How-do-you-do, once more, Miss Rose of Sharon. You're not the Bible's Rose of Sharon, are you?” he joshed a bit awkwardly.
”If I were a rose of anywhere, I'd soon wilt in this stuffy little office of inky smells,” she answered pleasantly. ”A rose would need petals of leather to get by here.”
”A rose, by rights, belongs out of doors,”--Martin indicated the direction of his farm--”out there where the sun s.h.i.+nes and there's no smells except the rich, healthy smells of nature.”
A merry twinkle appeared in Rose's eyes. ”Aren't roses out there”--and her gesture was in the same direction--”rather apt to be crowded down by the weeds?”
”Not if there was a good strong man about--a man who wanted to cultivate the soil and give the rose a pretty place in which to bloom.”
”Why, Martin,” Rose laughed lightly, ”the way you're fixed out there with that shack, the only thing that ever blooms is a fine crop of rag-weeds.”
At this gratuitous thrust a flood of crimson surged up Martin's magnificent, column-like throat and broke in hot waves over his cheeks.
”Well, it's not going to be that way for long,” he announced evenly.
”I'm going to plant a rose--a real rose there soon and everything is going to be right--garden, house and all.”
”Is this your way of telling me you're going to be married?”
”Kinda. The only trouble is, I haven't got my rose yet.”
”Well, if I can't have that item, at least I can print something about the selling of your coal rights. People will be interested because it shows the operators are coming in our direction. Here in Fallon, we can hardly realize all that this sudden new promotion may mean. From that conversation I heard at the bank I guess you got the regulation hundred an acre.”
”Yes, and a good part of it is going into a first-cla.s.s modern house with a heating plant and running hot and cold water in a tiled-floor bath-room, and a concrete cellar for the woman's preserved things and built-in cupboards, lots of closets, a big garret, and hardwood floors and fancy paper on the walls, and the prettiest polished golden oak furniture you can buy in Kansas City, not to mention a big fireplace and wide, sunny porches. A rose ought to be happy in a garden like that, don't you think? Folks'll say I've gone crazy when they see my building spree, but I know what I'm about. It's time I married and the woman who decides to be my wife is going to be glad to stay with me--”
”See here, Martin Wade, what ARE you driving at? What does all this talk mean anyway? Do you want me to give you a boost with someone?”
”You've hit it.”
”Who is she?” Rose asked, with genuine curiosity.
”You,” he said bluntly.
”Well, of all the proposals!”
”There's nothing to beat around the bush about. I'm only thirty-four, a hard worker, with a tidy sum to boot--not that I'm boasting about it.”
”But, Martin, what makes you think I could make you happy?”
Martin felt embarra.s.sed. He was not looking for happiness but merely for more of the physical comforts, and an escape from loneliness. He was practical; he fancied he knew about what could be expected from marriage, just as he knew exactly how many steers and hogs his farm could support. This was a new idea--happiness. It had never entered into his calculations. Life as he knew it was hard. There was no happiness in those fields when burned by the hot August winds, the soil breaking into cakes that left crevices which seemed to groan for water. That sky with its clouds that gave no rain was a hard sky. The people he knew were sometimes contented, but he could not remember ever having known any to whom the word ”happy” could be applied. His father and mother--they had been a good husband and wife. But happy? They had been far too absorbed in the bitter struggle for a livelihood to have time to think of happiness. This had been equally true of the elder Malls, was true today of Nellie and her husband. A man and a woman needed each other's help, could make a more successful fight, go farther together than either could alone. To Martin that was the whole matter in a nutsh.e.l.l, and Rose's gentle question threw him into momentary confusion.
”I don't know,” he answered uneasily. ”We both like to make a success of things and we'd have plenty to do with. We'd make a pretty good pulling team.”
Rose considered this thoughtfully. ”Perhaps the people who work together best are the happiest. But somehow I'd never pictured myself on a farm.”
”Of course, I don't expect you to make up your mind right away,” Martin conceded. ”It's something to study over. I'll come around to your place tomorrow evening after I get the ch.o.r.es done up and we can talk some more.”
So far as Martin was concerned, the matter was clinched. He felt not the slightest doubt but that it was merely a question of time before Rose would consent to his proposition.