Martie, the Unconquered Part 25

But it was a comfortable room; once the dining room, it had been changed and papered and carpeted for its present tenants when Martie, as housekeeper of the boarding-house, had decided to move the dining room into the big, useless rear parlour upstairs. She and Teddy had privacy here; they had plenty of room, and the feet that crisped by on the sidewalk, the noises from the kitchen behind her, and the squeaking of rats about the bas.e.m.e.nt entrance at night annoyed her not at all.

She had her own telephone here, her own fireplace, and she was comfortably accessible for the maids--there were two maids now--for the butcher and ice-man. Between her and the kitchen was a small dark s.p.a.ce, named by herself the "Cold Lairs," where she had a wash-stand and a small bath-tub. A bead of gas burned here night and day, but if Teddy ever became REALLY naughty he was to be placed in here as punishment and the gas turned out entirely. Teddy had never deserved this terrible fate, but he did not like the Cold Lairs, where his little crash wash-rag and his tiny toothbrush glimmered at him in the half-light, and where he always smelled the raw smell of the lemon his mother kept to whiten her hands.

He idolized his mother; they had a separate game for every hour and every undertaking of his happy day. He climbed out of his crib, in his little faded blue pajamas, for uproarious tumbling and pillow-fighting every morning. Then it was seven o'clock, and she told him a story while she dressed, and recited poems and answered his questions. There was a game about getting all the tangles out of his hair, the father and mother tangles, and the various children, and even the dog and cat.

Then for months it was a game to have her go on washing Teddy's face as long as he cried, and stop short when he stopped, so that after a while he did not cry at all. But by that time he could spell "Hot" and "Cold"

from the faucets, and could clean out the wash-stand with great soaping and scrubbing all by himself.

Then he and Mother went into the big dark kitchen, where Henny and Aurora were yawning over the boarders' breakfasts, Henny perhaps cutting out flat little biscuit, and Aurora spooning out prunes from a big stone jar with her slender brown thumb getting covered with juice.

His mother stirred the oatmeal, and, if it were summer, sometimes quickly and suspiciously tasted the milk that was going into all the little pitchers. Then they went upstairs.

The boarders had their meals at little separate tables now, and the "family," which was Mother and Nana, and Aunt Adele and Uncle John, were together at the largest table at the back where the serving and carving were done, and where the big shiny percolator stood. Teddy knew all the boarders--old Colonel and Mrs. Fox from the big upstairs bedroom, and Miss Peet and her sister, the school-teachers, from the hall-room on that floor, and the Winch.e.l.ls, mother and daughter and son, in the two front rooms on the third floor, and the two clerks in the back room. Uncle John and Aunt Adele had the pleasant big back room on the middle floor, and Nana existed darkly in the small room that finished that floor. The persons who filled his world, if they went away to the country at all in summer, went only for a fortnight, and this gave Mother only the time she needed to have their blankets washed and their rooms papered and the woodwork cleaned before their return.

Of them all, of course he liked Uncle John and Aunt Adele best, as Mother did. He had seen Aunt Adele kiss his mother, and often she and Uncle John would get into such gales of laughter at dinner that even Nana, even Teddy, in his high-chair, would laugh violently in sympathy.

All the boarders were kind to Teddy, but Uncle John was much more than kind. He brought Teddy toys from Broadway, sombreros and moccasins and pails. He was never too tired when he came home at night to take Teddy into his lap, and murmur long tales of giants and fairies. And on long, wet Sundays he had been known to propose trips to the Zoo and the Aquarium.

Flanking his own picture on his mother's bureau was a photograph of a magnificent person in velvet knickerbockers and a frilled shirt with a c.o.c.ked hat under his arm. This was Daddy, Teddy's mother told him; he must remember Daddy! But Teddy could not remember him.

"Darling--don't you remember Muddy taking you down to a train, and don't you remember the big man that carried you and bought you a sand-machine?"

"Where is my sand-machine, Moth'?" the little boy would demand interestedly.

"But Teddy, my heart, you were a big boy then, you were long past two.

CAN'T you remember?"

No use. When Wallace came back he must make the acquaintance of his son all over again. Martie would sigh, half-vexed, half-amused.

"Aren't they the queer little things, Adele? He remembers his sand-machine and doesn't remember his father!"

"Oh, I don't know, Martie. That was just after we came, you know. And I remember thinking that Teddy was a mere baby then!"

"Well, Wallace may be back any day now." Martie always sighed deeply over the courageous phrase. Wallace had followed a devious course in these years of the child's babyhood. Short engagements, failures, weeks on the road, some work in stock companies in the lesser cities--it was a curious history. He had seen his wife at long intervals, sometimes with a little money, once or twice really prosperous and hopeful, once--a dreadful memory--discouraged and idle and drinking. This was the last time but one, more than a year ago. Then had come the visit when she had met him, and he had given Teddy the sand toy. Martie had clung to her husband then; he had not looked well; he would never make anything of this wretched profession, she had pleaded. She was doing well at the boarding-house; he could stay there while he looked about him for regular work.

But Wallace was "working up" a new part, and it was going to be a great hit, he said. Every one was crazy about it. He would not go to the boardinghouse; he said that his wife's work there was the "limit." For his three days in town he lived with a fellow-actor at a downtown hotel, and Martie had a curious sense that he did not belong to her at all. There was about him the heavy aspect and manner of a man who has been drinking, but he told her that he was "all to the wagon." His a.s.sociate, a heavy, square-jawed man with a dramatic manner, praised Wallace's professional and personal character highly. Martie, deeply distressed, saw him go away to try the new play and went back to her own life.

This was in a bitter January. Now Teddy, building houses on the floor, had pa.s.sed his third enchanting birthday, and winter was upon the big city again. Martie awaited it philosophically. Her coal was in, anyway, or would be in, in another hour, and if the coal-drivers' strike came to pa.s.s she might sleep in the comfortable consciousness that no one under her roof would suffer. Her clean curtains would go up this week; it had been an endless job; it was finished.

"And the next thing on the programme is Thanksgiving!" she said between two yawns.

"Most of them goes out for that," said Mrs. Curley. "But the Colonel and her will stay. Nice to be them that never had to ask the price of turkey-meat this ten years!"

"Oh, well--we don't have it but twice a year!" Martie was folding the new curtains; presently she gave the neat pile a brisk, condensing slap with the flat of her hand. "There now, look what your smart Nana and Mother did, Ted!" she boasted. "And come here and give hims mother seventeen kisses and hugs, you darling, adorable, fat, soft, little old monkey!" The last words were smothered in the fine, silky strands under Teddy's dark, thick mop, on his soft little neck. He submitted to the tumbling and hugging, trying meanwhile to keep one eye upon the ship he had been building from an upturned chair.

Breathless, Martie looked up from the embrace to see a pretty smiling woman standing in the doorway, a wet raincoat over one arm, and a wet hat balanced on her hand.

"h.e.l.lo, people!" said the newcomer. "I'm drenched. I don't believe this can keep up, it's frightful."

"h.e.l.lo, Adele!" Martie said, setting Teddy on his feet. "Come in, and spread those things on the heater. Sit there where your skirts will get the heat. How was the matinee?"

"It was killing," said Mrs. Dryden, establishing herself comfortably by the radiator. She was a slender, bright-eyed woman of perhaps thirty, whose colouring ran to cool browns: clear brown eyes, brown hair prettily dressed, a pale brown skin under which a trace of red only occasionally appeared. To-day her tailor-made suit was brown, and about her throat was a narrow boa of some brown fur. "Here, Teddy, take these to your mother," she added, extending a crushed box half full of chocolates. "The place was PACKED," she went on, crunching. "And, my dear!--coming out we were right CLOSE to Doris Beresford, in the most divine coat I ever laid eyes on! I suppose they all like to have an idea of what's going on at the other theatres. I don't believe she uses one bit of make-up; wonderful skin! There was such a mob in the car it was something terrible. A man crushed up against Ethel; she said she thought he'd break her arm! I got a seat; I don't know how it is, but I always do. We'd been running, and I suppose my colour was high, and a man got up IMMEDIATELY. Nice--I always thank them. I think that's the least you can do. Ethel said he sat and stared at me all the way up to Fifty-ninth, where he got off. He was an awfully nice-looking fellow; I'll tell you what he looked like: a young doctor. Don't you know those awfully CLEAN-looking men----"

Martie, now changing Teddy's little suit for dinner, let the stream run on unchecked. Mrs. Curley, who did not particularly fancy Mrs. Dryden, had gone upstairs, but Martie really liked to listen to Adele.

Presently she turned on the lights, and led Teddy into the Cold Lairs, to have his face washed. Adele reached for the evening paper, and began to peruse it idly. When Martie came out of the bath-room, it was to hear a knock at the door.

"It's John!" predicted Adele. A moment later her husband came into the room. Like his wife, he was cold and wet and rosy from the street, but he had evidently been upstairs, for he wore his old house-coat and dry slippers, and had brushed his hair. He was younger than Adele by three or four years, but he looked like a boy of twenty; squarely built, not tall, but giving an impression of physical power nevertheless. Martie had first thought his face odd, then interesting; now she found it strangely attractive. His eyes, between sandy lashes and under thick sandy brows, were of a sea-blue in colour, his head was covered with a cap of thick, l.u.s.treless, sand-coloured hair. Something odd, elfin, whimsical, in his crooked smile lent an actual charm to his face, for Martie at least. She told him he looked like Pan.

Early in their acquaintance she had asked him if he were not a Dane, not a Norwegian, if he had not viking blood? She said that he suggested sagas and berserkers and fjords--"not that I am sure what any of those words mean!" His answering laugh had been as wild as a delighted child's. No; he was American-born, of an English father and an Irish mother, he said. He had never been abroad, never been to college, never had any family that he remembered, except Adele. He had meant to be a "merchant sailor"--a term he seemed to like, although it conveyed only a vague impression to Martie--but his lungs hadn't been strong. So he went to Arizona and loafed. And there he met Adele; her mother kept the boarding-house in which he lived, in fact, and there they were married.

Adele had a glorious voice and she wanted to come to New York to cultivate it. And then Adele had been ill.

His voice fell reverently when he spoke of this illness. Adele had nearly died. What the hope that had also really died at this time meant to him, Martie could only suspect when she saw him with Teddy. Adele herself told her that she was never strong enough for new hopes.

"We couldn't afford it, of course; so perhaps it was just as well,"

said Adele one day when she and Martie had come to be good friends, and were confidential. "I felt terribly for a while, because I have a wonderful way with children; I know that myself. They always come to me--funniest thing! Dr. Poole was saying the other day that I had a remarkable magnetism. I said, 'I don't know about THAT,'--and I don't, Martie! I don't think I'm so magnetic, do you--'BUT,' I said, 'I really do seem to have a hold on children!' Jack loves children, too, but he spoils them. I don't believe in letting children run a house; it isn't good for them, and it isn't good for you. Let them have their own toys and treat them as kindly as possible, but----"

John Dryden was a salesman in a furniture house; perhaps the city's finest furniture house. Martie suspected that his pleasant, half-shy, yet definite manner, made him an excellent salesman. He talked to her about his a.s.sociates, whom he took upon their own valuations, and deeply admired. This one was a "wizard" at figures, and that one had "a deuce of a manner with women." John chuckled over their achievements, but she knew that he himself must be the secret wonder of the place. He might be more or less, but he was certainly not a typical furniture salesman. Sometimes the manager took him to lunch; Martie wondered if he quoted the queer books he read, and made the staid echoes of the club to which they went awake to his pagan laughter.

His extraordinarily happy temperament knew sudden despairs, but they were usually because he had made a "rotten mistake," or because he was "such a fool" about something. He never complained of the stupid daily round; perhaps it was not stupid to him, who always had a book under his arm, and to whom the first snow and the first green leaves were miracles of delight every year. He treated Adele exactly as if she had been an engaging five-year-old, and she had charming childish mannerisms for him alone. He pacified her when she fretted and complained, and was eagerly grateful when her mood was serene. Her prettiness and her little spoiled airs, Martie realized surprisedly, were full of appeal for him.

"You don't mean that--you don't mean that!" he would say to her when she sputtered and raged. He listened absently to her long dissertation upon the persons--and for Adele the world was full of them--who tried to cheat her, or who were insolent to her, and to whom she was triumphantly insolent in return. She found Martie much more sympathetic as a listener.

Toward Martie, too, John soon began to display a peculiar sensitiveness. At first it was merely that she spurred his sense of humour; he began to test the day's events by her laughter. After that her more general opinions impressed him; he watched her at dinner and accepted eagerly her verdict upon political affairs or the books and plays of the hour. She noticed, and was a little touched to notice, that he quoted her weeks after she had expressed herself. He brought her books and they disagreed and argued about them. In summer, with Adele languid under her parasol, and Teddy enchanting in white, they went to the park concerts, or to the various museums, and wrangled about the new Strauss and Debussy, and commented upon the Hals canvases and the art of Meissonier and Detaille.

This evening he had a book for her from the Public Library; he had been dipping into it on the elevated train.

"Which ticket is this on, John?"

"Yours."

"Well, then, you paid my dues on the other! How much?"

"Six cents."

She showed him the six coppers on her white palm.

"You were an angel to do it. Listen; do you want to read this when I'm through?"

"Well, if you think so."

"Think so?--Carlyle's 'Revolution'? Of course you ought to! Adele, isn't he ignorant?"

"I read that in High School," smiled Adele. "It's awfully good."

"Mis' Ban'ster," Aurora was at the door, "Hainy was cuttin' open the chickens f' t'morrer, and she says one of 'em give an awful queer sort of POP--!"

"Oh, for Heaven's sake!" Martie started kitchenward. John Dryden gave a laugh of purest joy; Aurora was one of his delights. "We always say we're going to read aloud in the evenings," she called back. "Now here's a chance--a wet evening, and Adele and I with oceans of sewing!"

She went from the kitchen upstairs, finding the various boarders quietly congregating in the hall and parlour, awaiting the opening of the dining-room door. Adele had gone up to her room, but Teddy and John were roaming about. Rain still slashed and swished out of doors. The winter was upon them.

"Seems to be such a smell of PAINT," said the younger Miss Peet.