Martie, the Unconquered Part 42

"I looked them in the eye," said Malcolm, wiping his moustache before he gave her an imitation of his own scorn, "and I said, 'Gentlemen, before the home that was my father's, and will be my son's, pa.s.ses from my hands, those hands will be dust!'"

"But why do they want it?" asked Martie after duly applauding this sentiment.

She was rapidly thinking. The old house was mortgaged, and doubly mortgaged. It was useless to the average buyer, for besides the fact that the neighbourhood was no longer Monroe's best, it was four feet below street level. It was surrounded by useless shabby barns and outhouses, it was five times too large for the diminished family, and, in case of Pa's death--and Pa was nearly seventy--it must fetch what it might, for between Len's constant need of money for the Estates, and Lydia's mild helplessness, there could be no holding it for a fair price.

"For the new High School--for the new High School!" her father said impatiently. For perhaps twenty years he had had occasional offers for the property, and had always scornfully refused them.

"Yet I think that's rather touching, Pa," Martie said.

"What's touching?" he asked suspiciously, after a moment in which he obviously tried to see any touching aspect in the affair.

"Why, to have the Monroe High School on the old Monroe site!" Martie said innocently. "Of course Mr. Tate and Cliff Frost know what it means to you, and yet I suppose they realize that the neighbourhood is changing, and that those shops have come in, this side of the bridge, and that, even if we lived here ten years more, we couldn't twenty. I agree with your decision, Pa, of course; but at the same time, I see that no other plot in Monroe would be so fitting!"

Malcolm stirred his tea, raised the cup, and drank off the hot fluid with great gusto. A faint frown darkened his brow.

"And, pray, where would the family live?" he asked presently.

"Where we ought to be now," Martie answered promptly. "In the Estates.

I have been thinking lately, Pa, that nothing would give that development such prestige as to have you there! Put up as pretty a house as you choose, build a drive, and put in a handsome fence, but be Malcolm Monroe of the Monroe Estates!"

Always captured by phrases, she saw him tug at his moustache to hide a smile.

"Well!" he said presently. "Well! You astonish me. But yes, I see your point. I must candidly admit you have a point there. With another attractive home there--yes, there is something in that. But I had supposed that you girls had a sentiment for this old place," he added almost reproachfully.

"And so we have!" Martie answered quickly. "But it is one thing to sell this place in small lots, Pa, and have it chopped into shops and shanties, and another to have a three-hundred-thousand-dollar building go in here. The new High School on the old Monroe place; you'll admit there's a great difference?"

Had her bombastic father always been so easily influenced? Martie wondered, remembering the old storms and the old stubbornness. It was true, some persons couldn't do things; other persons could. Lydia and Ma would have goaded him into an obstinacy that no later judgment could dispel, and after his death Monroe would have lamented that he had left next to nothing, for the place had to go for taxes and interest overdue, and Lydia and Ma would have settled themselves comfortably on Len for life.

"All the difference in the world," Malcolm said, now deep in thought.

"You could send a letter to the Zeus," Martie added presently, "saying that you had never even considered such a step before, but that to sell for educational purposes was--you know!--was in accord with the spirit of your father--that sort of thing!"

"And so it was!" he answered warmly.

"A few ready thousands would be the making of the Estates, now," said Martie, "but naturally the town need know nothing of that!"

Malcolm shrugged a careless a.s.sent, and silently finished his pie.

"Your sister Lydia--" he began suddenly, shaking his head.

"Yes, Lyd will object," Martie a.s.sented, as his voice stopped. "Lyd is a conservative, Pa. She has very little of the spirit that brought Grandfather Monroe here; she doesn't, in the Estates, see property that will be just as beautiful and just as valuable as anything in Monroe in a few years. Why, Pa, you must remember the days when our trees in the yard here were only saplings?"

"Remember?" he echoed impressively. "Why, I remember Monroe as the field between two sheep-ranches. There was not a blade of wheat, not a fruit tree--"

He was well started. Martie listened to an hour's complacent reminiscence. At eight o'clock he went to his study, but came back a moment later, with his gla.s.ses pushed up on his lead-coloured forehead, to say that the sum old Tait mentioned would clear the mortgage, build a handsome house, and perhaps leave a bit over for Martie and her boy.

At nine he appeared again, to say that he would deed the new house to Lydia, who would undoubtedly take the change a little hard--a little hard!

"Yes," said old Malcolm thoughtfully, from the doorway, glancing, with his spectacles still on his forehead, at the pencilled list he had in his hand. "Yes, I believe I have hit upon the solution!

I--believe--I--have--hit--it!"

Old Mrs. Sark having fulfilled her family's mournful expectations, Lydia stayed for the funeral, and was so deeply absorbed and satisfied by her position in the Kilroy house that she returned home still impressive, consolatory, and crushed in manner.

She sat beside Martie on the front steps, in the warm March twilight, retailing the events of the last three days, and living again their moments of grief and stress.

"I know I was a consolation to them, Mart--of course, there's little enough one can do! But yesterday morning--I sat up both nights; I declare I don't know where the strength comes from--yesterday morning, before the funeral, I went up to Louis Kilroy--I never saw a grown man take a thing so hard--and I said, 'Louis, you must come and have a cup of hot, strong coffee!' Bessie was there, and I must say she seemed as devoted to Grandma as if she'd been her own daughter, and she came and took my hands, and she said, 'Lydia, I never will forget all you've done for us!' Well," Lydia went on, with a sad little deprecatory shrug, "I didn't do much. But it was somebody THERE, you know! Somebody to do the plain little everyday things that MUST be done, whether death is in the house, or not!" And Lydia sighed in weary content. "Carrie David says she believes Tom'll go next--" she was pursuing mournfully, when Martie interrupted.

"Say, Lyd dear, we've been having great times since you were away--I didn't have a chance to say a word to you at the funeral--but the school board, or the city fathers, or some one, has made Pa an offer for the house!"

"What house?" Lydia asked interestedly.

"THIS one." Martie began to chew the fresh sprout of a yellow banksia rose.

"This one!" Lydia's mouth remained a little open, her eyes were wild.

"Yes; this whole tract. They'll fill it in; they want if for the new High School."

"Well--" Lydia tossed her head loftily. "Of course, Pa told them--?"

"Yes, he did tell them, as he always has--that nothing would persuade him to part with it!"

"WELL!" said Lydia, breathing again.

"But he's been thinking it over, Lyd, and he's really seriously reconsidering it. You see the instant Pa dies, the Bank will foreclose, for neither you nor I have a cent, and Len is tied up for years with the Estates--"

Martie began to speak eagerly and quickly. But her voice died before Lydia's look.

"Martie! How can you! Speaking of Pa's death in that callous, cold-blooded way; when poor Ma hasn't been buried three years--and now dear old Grandma Sark--"

Lydia fumbled for a handkerchief, and began to sob. After a few moments, in which Martie only offered a few timid pats on her shoulder for consolation, she suddenly dried her eyes, and began with bitter clearness:

"I know who has done this, Mart! I don't say much, but I see. I see now where all your petting of Pa, and humouring Pa, was leading! Oh, how can you--how can you--how CAN you! My home, the dear old Monroe place, that three generations of us--but I won't stand it! I feel as if Ma would rise up and rebuke me! No, you and Pa can decide what you please, but no power on earth will make me--and where would we live, might I ask? We couldn't go to the Poor House, I suppose?"

"Pa'd build a lovely house, smaller and more modern, on the Estates,"

Martie explained. Lydia a.s.sumed a look of high scorn.

"Oh, indeed!" she said, gulping and wiping her eyes again. "Indeed! Is that so? Move out there so that Len would prosper, so that there would be one more house out on that DESOLATE flat field--very well, you and Pa can go! But I stay here!"

And trembling all over, as she always did tremble when forced into anything but a mildly neutral position, Lydia went upstairs. The dinner hour was embittered by a painful discussion and by more tears.

Malcolm was somewhat inclined to waver toward Lydia's view, but Martie was firm. When Lydia tearfully protested that, just as it stood, the house would made an ideal "gentleman's estate," Martie mercilessly answered that at its present level, without electric light or garage or baths, it was just so much "old wood and plaster." Lydia winced at this term as if she had been struck.

"How would you pay taxes and interest, if anything happened to Pa?"

Martie demanded briskly.

"We would have no rent to pay," Lydia countered quickly, red spots burning in her cheeks, and giving her mild face an unusually wild look.

"Why do people own their homes, if there's no economy in it?"

"Rent doesn't come to three thousand a year!" Martie reminded her.