Part 33 (1/2)

”Wallie, have you any money for the laundry?”

”Oh, Lord! How much is it?”

”Two dollars and thirteen cents; four weeks now.”

”Well, when does he come?”

”To-day.”

”Well, you tell him that I'll step in to-morrow and pay the whole thing. I'm going to see Richards to-day; I won't be home to dinner.”

”But I thought you were going to see that man in the Bronx, about the moving picture job to-morrow?”

”Yes, I am. What about it?”

”Nothing. Only, Wallie, if you have dinner with Mr. Richards and all those men, you know--you know you may not feel like--like getting up early to-morrow!” Martie, hesitating in the doorway with the baby, wavered between tact and truth.

”Why don't you say I'll be drunk, while you're about it?”

The ugly tone would rouse everything that was ugly in response.

”Very well, I WILL say that, if you insist!” The slamming door ended the conversation; Martie trembled as she put the child to bed.

Presently Isabeau would come to her to say noncommittally, but with watchful, white-rimmed eyes, that Mist' Bans'ter he didn' want no breakfuss, he jus' take hisse'f off. For the rest of the day, Martie carried a heart of lead.

Mentally, morally, physically, the little family steadily descended.

With Martie too ill to do more than drag herself through the autumn days, Wallace idle and ugly, Isabeau overworked and discontented, and bills acc.u.mulating on every side, there was no saving element left.

Desperately the wife and mother plodded on; the children must have milk and bread, the rent-collector must be pacified if not satisfied.

Everything else was unimportant. Her own appearance mattered nothing, the appearance of the house mattered nothing. She pinned the children's clothing when their b.u.t.tons disappeared; she slipped a coat wearily over her house-dress, and went to the delicatessen store five minutes before dinner-time. She was thin enough now,--Martie, who had always longed to be thin. Sometimes, sitting on the side of an unmade bed, with a worn little s.h.i.+rt of Ted's held languidly in her hands, she would call the maid.

”Isabeau! Hasn't Teddy a clean s.h.i.+rt?”

”No, MA'AM! You put two them s.h.i.+rts in yo' basket 'n' says how you's going to fix 'em!”

”I must get at those s.h.i.+rts,” Martie would muse helplessly. ”Come, Ted, look what you're doing! Pay attention, dear!”

”Man come with yo meat bill, Mis' Ban'ster,” Isabeau might add, lingering in the doorway. ”Ah says you's OUT.”

”Thank you, Isabeau.” Perhaps Martie would laugh forlornly. ”Never mind--things must change! We can't go on THIS way!”

Suddenly, she was ill. Without warning, without the slip or stumble or running upstairs that she was quite instinctively avoiding, the accident befell. Martie, sobered, took to her bed, and sent Isabeau flying for Dr. Converse, the old physician whose pleasant wife had often spoken to Teddy in the market. Strange--strange, that she who so loved children should be reduced now to mere thankfulness that the little life was not to be, mere grat.i.tude for an opportunity to lie quiet in bed!

”For I suppose I should stay in bed for a few days?” Martie asked the doctor. Until she was told she might get up. Very well, but he must remember that she had a husband and two children to care for, and make that soon.

Dr. Converse did not smile in answer. After a while she knew why. The baffling weakness did not go, the pain and restlessness seemed to have been hers forever. Day after day she lay helpless; while Isabeau grumbled, Margar fretted, and Teddy grew noisy and unmanageable.

Wallace was rarely at home, the dirt and confusion of the house rode Martie's sick brain like a nightmare. She told herself, as she lay longing for an appetizing meal, an hour's freedom from worry, that there was a point beyond which no woman might be expected to bear things, that if life went on in this way she must simply turn her face to the wall and die.

Ghost-white, she was presently on her feet. The unbearable had been borne. She was getting well again; ridden with debts, and as shabby and hopeless as it could well be, the Bannister family staggered on. Money problems buzzed about Martie's eyes like a swarm of midges: Isabeau had paid this charge of seventy cents, there was a drug bill for six dollars and ten cents--eighty cents, a dollar and forty cents, sixty-five cents--the little sums cropped up on all sides.

Martie took pencil and paper, and wrote them all down. The hideous total was two hundred and seventeen dollars on the last day of October.