Part 44 (1/2)
”But don't they HAVE it? Girls don't want it, that's all.”
”Neither do boys, Lyd.”
”So your idea would be to force something they didn't want on girls, just because it's forced on boys?” Lydia said, quietly triumphant.
Martie, looking up from her scratched sheets, smiled and blinked at her sister for a few seconds.
”Exactly!” she said then, pleasantly.
She finished the little article, and called it ”Give Her A Job!” It was only what she had attempted to express during her first return visit to Monroe years ago; during those days and nights of fretting when the thought of Golda White had ridden her troubled thoughts like an evil dream. Later, she had re-written the article, just before Wallace's return from long absence to New York. Now she wrote it again: it was a relief to have it finally polished and finished, and sent away in the mail. She had never before despatched it so indifferently.
Even when the editor's brief, pleasant note was in her hand, three weeks later, and when she had banked the check for thirty-five dollars, Martie was not particularly thrilled. It was so small a drop in the ocean of magazine reading--it was so short a step toward independence!
She told Miss f.a.n.n.y and Sally about it, and for a month or two watched the magazine for it. Then she forgot it.
CHAPTER IV
She forgot it for a new dream. For long before the tangled negotiations that surrounded the sale of the old Monroe place were completed, Martie's thoughts were absorbed by a new and tremendous consideration: Clifford Frost was paying her noticeable attention.
Monroe saw this, of course, before she did. Without realizing it, Martie still kept a social gulf between herself and the Frost and Parker families. They were the richest and most prominent people in the village, she was just one of the Monroe girls. She was too busy, and too little given to thought of herself, to waste time on speculations of this nature.
More than that, Lydia's deep resentment of the sale of the old home gave Martie food for thoughts of another nature. Lydia never let the subject rest for an instant. She came to the table red-eyed and sniffing. It was no use to plant sweet-peas this year, it was no use to prune the roses. Whether Lydia was sitting rocking on the side porch silently, through the spring twilight, or impatiently flinging a setting hen off the nest, with muttered observations concerning the senseless scattering of the Monroe family before that setting of eggs could be hatched, Martie felt her deep and angry disapproval.
It was several weeks, and April had clothed Monroe in b.u.t.tercups and new gra.s.s, before Martie became aware that the name of Clifford Frost was frequently a.s.sociated with Lydia's long protests.
”I suppose it's the new way of doing things,” she heard her sister saying one day. ”Delicacy--! They don't know what it is nowadays. Do as you like--run into a man's office--meet him on the steps after church--!”
Martie felt a sudden p.r.i.c.k. She had indeed gone more than once to Clifford's office, and last Sunday she had indeed chanced to meet him after church--!
”Tear away old a.s.sociations!” Lydia was continuing darkly.
”Slash--chop--nothing matters! I know I am old-fas.h.i.+oned,” she added, with a sort of violent scorn. ”But I declare it makes me laugh to remember how dignified _I_ was--Ma used to say that it was born in me to hold aloof! A man had to say something PRETTY DEFINITE before I was willing to fling myself into his arms! And what's the result, I'm an old maid--and I have myself to thank!”
”Lyddy, darling, WHAT are you driving at?”
The sisters were at supper together, on a warm spring Sunday. Martie, removing from his greasy little hand a chop-bone that Teddy had chewed white, looked up to see that her sister's face was pale, and her eyes reddened with tears. Cornered, Lydia took refuge in pathos.
”Oh--I don't know! I suppose it's just that I cannot seem to feel that one of those bare little houses in the Estates EVER will seem like home,” faltered Lydia. ”You and Pa must do as you think best, of course--you're young and bright and full of life, and naturally you forget--but I suppose I feel that Ma--that Ma--!”
She left the table in tears, Martie staring rather bewilderedly after her. Teddy gazed steadily at his mother, a question in his dark eyes.
He was not a talkative child, except occasionally, when she and he were alone, but they always understood each other. To Martie he was the one exquisite and unalloyed joy in life. His splendid, warm little person was at once the tie that bound her to the old days, and to the future.
Whatever that future might be, it would bring her nothing of which she could be so proud. n.o.body else might claim him; he was hers.
He suddenly smiled at her now, and slipping from the table with a great square of sponge cake in his hand, backed up to his mother to have his napkin untied. He guarded his cake as best he could when his mother suddenly beset him with a general rumpling and kissing, and then slipped out into the yard as silently as a little rabbit.
But Martie sat on, musing, trying to catch the inference that she knew she had missed from Lydia's tirades. Lydia was furious about the sale of the house, of course--but this new note--?
In a rush, comprehension came. Alone in the dark old dining room, in the disorder of the Sunday suppertable, Martie's cheeks were dyed a bright, conscious crimson. Could Lydia mean--could Lydia possibly be implying that Cliff--that Cliff--?