Martie, the Unconquered Part 30

When he sat down beside her again, she again laid her hand on his.

"What is it, John?" she asked anxiously.

"Nothing!" he said, with a brief glance and smile.

"I've made you cross?"

"You!" His dark gaze was on the floor, his hands locked. For a full minute there was silence in the room. Then he looked up at her with a disturbing smile. "I am human, Martie," he said simply.

The note was so new in their relationship that Martie's heart began to hammer with astonishment and with a curious thrilling pleasure. There was nothing for her to say. She could hardly believe that he knew what he implied, or that she construed the words aright. He was so different from all other men, so strangely old in many ways, so boyish in others.

A little frightened, she smiled at him in silence. But he did not raise his eyes to meet her look.

"I did not think that when I was thirty I would be a clerk in a furniture house, Martie!" he said sombrely, after awhile.

"You may not be!" she reminded him hearteningly. And presently she added: "I did not think that I would be a poor man's wife on the upper East Side!"

He looked up then with a quick smile.

"Isn't it the deuce?" he asked.

"Life is queer!" Martie said, shrugging.

"I was up in Connecticut last week," John said, "and I'll tell you what I saw there. I went up to that neighbourhood to buy some old furniture for an order we were filling--I was there only a few hours. I found a little old white house, on a river bank, with big trees over it. It was on a foundation of old stones, that had been painted white, and there was an orchard, with a stone wall. The man wanted eighteen hundred dollars for it."

"Is THAT all?" Martie asked, amazed.

"That's all. I sat there and talked to him for awhile."

"Well?" said Martie, as he stopped.

"Well, nothing," he answered, after a moment's pause. "Only I've been thinking about it ever since--what it would be to live there, and write, and walk about that little farm! Funny, isn't it? Eighteen hundred dollars--not much, only I'll never have it. And you are another poor man's wife--only not mine! Do you believe in G.o.d?"

"You know I do!" she answered, laughing, but a little shaken by his seriousness.

"You think G.o.d manages things this way?"

"John, don't talk like a high school boy!"

"I suppose it sounds that way," he said mildly, and he rose suddenly from his chair. "Well, I have to go!" He looked at her keenly. "But you don't look very well, Martie," he said. "You've no colour at all. Is it the weather?"

"John, what a baby you are!" But Martie was amazed, under her flush of laughter, at his simplicity. Could it be possible that he did not know?

"I am expecting something very precious here one of these days," she said. He looked at her with a polite smile, entirely uncomprehending.

"Surely you know that we--that I--am going to have another baby, John?"

she asked.

She saw the muscles of his face stiffen, and the blood rise. He looked at her steadily. A curious silence hung between them.

"Didn't you know?" Martie pursued lightly.

"No," he said at last thickly, "I didn't know." He gave her a look almost frightening in its wildness; shot to the heart, he might have managed just such a smile. He made a frantic gesture with his hands.

"Of course--" he said at random. "Of course--a baby!" He walked across the room to look at a picture on the wall. "That's rather--pretty!" he said in a suffocating voice. Suddenly he came back, and sat close beside her; his face was pale. "Martie," he said pitifully, "it's dangerous for you--you're not strong, and if you--if you die, you know----You look pale now, and you're so thin. I don't know anything about it, but I wish it was over!"

Tears sprang to Martie's eyes, but they were tears of exquisite joy.

She laid a warm hand over his.

"Why, John, dear, there's no danger!"

"Isn't there?" he asked doubtfully.

"Not the least, you goose! I'm ever so glad and proud about it--don't look so woe-begone!"

Their hands were tightly locked: her face was radiant as she smiled up at him.

"It all works out, John--the furniture clerking, you know, and the being poor, and all that!"

"Sure it does!"

"Other people have succeeded in spite of it, I mean, so why not you and I?"

"Of course, they're not BORN rich and successful," he submitted thoughtfully.

"Look at Lincoln--and Napoleon!" Martie said hardily.

John scowled down at the hand he held.

"Well, it's easier for some people than others," he stated firmly.

"Lincoln may have had to split rails for his supper--what DO you split rails for, anyway?" he interrupted himself to ask, suddenly diverted.

"Fences, I guess!" Martie offered, on a gale of laughter.

"Well, whatever it was. But I don't see what they needed so many fences for! But anyway, being poor or rich doesn't seem to matter half as much as some other things! And now I'm going. Good-bye, Martie."

"And write me, John, and send me books!" she urged, as he turned away.

He was at the door: meditating with his hand on the k.n.o.b, and his back turned to her. Martie watched him, expecting some parting word. But he did not even turn to smile a farewell. He let himself quietly out without another glance, and was gone. A moment later she heard the outer door close.

She sat on, in the darkening room, her book forgotten. The storm was coming fast now. Women in the backyards were drawing in their clothes-lines with a great creaking and rattling, and the first rush of warm, sullen drops struck the dusty dining-room window. Curtains streamed, and pictures on the wall stirred in the damp, warm wind.

Half an hour of furious musketry pa.s.sed: blue dashes lighted the room with an eerie splendour, thunder clapped and rolled; died away toward the south as a fresh onslaught poured in from the north.

Martie heeded nothing. Her soul was wrapped in a deep peace, and as the cooling air swept in, she dropped her tired head against the chair's cushion, and drifted into a dream of river and orchard, and of a white house set in green gra.s.s.

She knew that John would write her: she held the unopened envelope in her fingers the next morning, a strange, sweet emotion at her heart.

The beautiful, odd handwriting, the cleanly chosen words, these made the commonplace little note significant.

"Who's your letter from?" Wallace asked idly. She tossed it to him unconcernedly: she had told him of John's call. "He must have a case on you, Mart!" Wallace said indifferently.

"Well, in his curious way, perhaps he has," she answered honestly.