Martie, the Unconquered. Kathleen Thompson Norris

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СКАЧАТЬ the plains; it was the women who packed the books in the horsehair trunks, that read the Bibles and cleaned and sewed and prayed in the old home way. You don't suppose those old miners and grocers, who came later to be the city fathers, ever had as much education as Joe Hawkes, or half as much!"

      "I wish my father felt as you do, Doc' Ben," Sally said presently, the brightness dying from her face. "But Pa will never, never—And even if there were no other reason, why Joe hasn't a steady job—"

      "That brings me to what I really want to say to you to-day, Sally," the old man interrupted her briskly. He opened a desk drawer and took from it a small, old-fashioned photograph. Sally saw a young woman's form, disguised under the scallops, ruffles, and pleats of the early seventies, a bright face under a cascade of ringlets, and a little oval bonnet set coquettishly awry. "D'ye know who that is?" asked Dr. Ben.

      "I—well, yes; I suppose?" murmured Sally sympathetically.

      "Yes, it's my wife," he answered. "Mary—Our boy would be thirty. They went away together—poor girl, poor girl! We wanted a big family, Sally; we hoped for a houseful of children. And I had her for only fifteen months—only fifteen months to remember for thirty years!"

      Sally was deeply impressed. She thought it strangely flattering in Dr. Ben to take her into his confidence in this way, and that she would tell Martie about it as they walked home.

      "No," he said musingly. "I never had a child! And Sally, if I had it all to do over again, I'd marry again. I'd have sons. That's the citizen's duty. Some day we'll recognize it, and then you bearers of children will come into your own. There'll be recognition for every one of them, we'll be the first nation to make our poor women proud and glad when a child is coming. It's got to be, Sally."

      Sally was listening politely, but she was not interested. She had heard all this before, many times. Dr. Ben's extraordinary views upon the value of the family were familiar to every one in Monroe. But her attention was suddenly aroused by the mention of her own name.

      "Now, supposing that you and Joe take it into your heads to get married some day," the doctor was saying, "how about children?"

      Sally's ready colour flooded her face. She made no attempt to answer him.

      "Would ye have them?" the old man asked impatiently.

      "Why—why, Dr. Ben, I don't know!" Sally said in great confusion. "I—I suppose people DO."

      "You suppose people do?" he asked scornfully. "Don't ye KNOW they do?"

      "Well, I don't suppose any girl thinks very much of such things until she's married," Sally said firmly. "Mama doesn't like us to discuss—"

      "Doesn't your mother ever talk to you about such things?" the old man demanded.

      "Certainly not!" Sally answered with spirit.

      "What DOES she talk to you about?" he asked amazedly. "It's your business in life, after all. She's not taught ye any other. What does she expect ye to do—learn it all after it's too late to change?"

      "All what?" Sally said, a little frightened, even a little sick. He stopped his march, and looked at her with something like pity.

      "All the needs of your soul and body," he said kindly, "and your children's souls and bodies. Well! that's neither here nor there. But the fact is this, Sally: I've no children of my own to raise. And as ye very well know, I've got my own theories about putting motherhood on a different basis, a business basis. I want you to let me pay you—as the State ought to pay you—three hundred a year for every child you bear. I want to demonstrate to my own satisfaction, before I try to convince any Government, that if the child-bearing woman were put on a plane of economic value, her barren, parasite sister would speedily learn—"

      Sally had turned pale. Now she rose in girlish dignity.

      "I hope you'll forgive me, Dr. Ben, for saying that I won't listen to ONE word more. I know you've been thinking about these things so long that you forget how OUTRAGEOUS they sound! Motherhood is a sacred privilege, and to reduce it to—"

      "So is wifehood, Sally!" the old man interposed soothingly.

      "Well," she flashed back, "nobody's PAID for wifehood!"

      "Oh, yes, my dear. You can sue a man for not supporting you. It's done every day!"

      "Then—then a man ought to pay the three hundred a year!" countered Sally.

      "Well, I'm with you there. But the world has got to see that before you can force him." The doctor sighed. "So you won't let me stand grandfather to your children, Sally?"

      "Oh, if you WERE their grandfather!" she answered. "Then you could do as you liked!"

      "There you are, the parasite!" he said, smiling whimsically. "You're your mother's daughter, Sally. Give you the least blood-claim on a man's money, and you'll push it as far as you can. But offer to pay you for doing the work God meant you to do and you're cut to the soul. Well—"

      He was still holding forth eloquently on the subject of children and nations when Martie came back, and Sally, with a scarlet face, was evidently lost in thoughts of her own.

      As the girls walked home, Sally did not repeat to Martie her conversation with the old doctor, nor for many weeks afterward. But Martie did not notice her sister's indignant silence, for they met Rodney Parker coming out of the Bank, and he walked with them to the bridge, and asked Martie to go with him to see the Poulson Star Stock Company in a Return Engagement Extraordinary on the following night.

      Martie was conscious of passing a milestone in her emotional life on the evening of this day, when she said to herself that she loved Rodney Parker. She admitted it with a sort of splendid shame, as she went about her usual household occupations, passing from the hot pleasantness of the kitchen to the cool, stale odours of the dining room; running upstairs to light the bathroom-and hall-gas for her father and brother, and sometimes stepping for a moment into the darkness of the yard to be alone with her enchanted thoughts.

      All the young Monroes regarded their father's temperamental shortcomings with stoicism, so that it was in no sense resentfully that she faced the inevitable preliminaries that night.

      "Pa," said she cheerfully over the dessert, "you don't mind if I go to the show with Rodney to-morrow, do you?"

      "This is the first I've heard of any show," Malcolm said stiffly, glancing at his wife. Mrs. Monroe patiently told him what she knew of it. "Why, no, I suppose there is no reason you shouldn't go," he presently said discontentedly.

      "Oh, thank you, Pa!" Martie said, with a soaring heart. He looked at her dispassionately.

      "Your sisters and your brother are going, I suppose?" Malcolm asked, glancing about the circle. Martie told herself she might have known he was not done with the subject so easily.

      "I'm not—because I haven't the price!" grinned Leonard. His mother and Lydia laughed.

      "I don't suppose Martie proposes going alone with young Parker?" Malcolm asked in well-assumed amazement.

      "Why, Pa—I don't see why NOT" Mrs. Monroe protested weakly.

      Her husband was magnificent in his surprise. He looked about in a sort of royal astonishment.

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