"Her husband?" Martie's voice died in a sort of faintness.

"Sure! She was married six years before I ever saw her. Uncle Chess says he heard it, and then forgot it, you know the way you do? I've been to Portland and Uncle Chess was bully. His old lawyer, whom he consulted at the time I left there, was dead, but we dug up the license bureau and found what we were after. She had been married all right and her husband's still living. We found him in the Home for Incurables up there; been there fifteen years. I got a copy of her marriage license from the Registrar and if Mrs. Golda White Ferguson ever turns up again we'll see who does the talking about bigamy! The she-devil! And I told you about meeting Dawson?"

"Oh, G.o.d, I thank Thee--I thank Thee!" Martie was breathing to herself, her eyes closed. "Dawson?" she asked, when he repeated the name.

Wallace had straightened up; it was quite in his old manner that he said:

"I--would--rather work for Emory Dawson than for any man I know of in New York!"

"Oh, a manager?"

"The coming manager--you mark what I say!"

"And you met him?" Martie was asking the dutiful questions; but her face rested against her husband's as she talked, and she was crying a little, in joy and relief.

For answer Wallace gently dislodged her, so that he might take from his pocket a letter, the friendly letter that the manager had dashed off.

"He swears he'll book me!" Wallace said, refolding the letter. "He said he needs me, and I need him. I borrowed two hundred from Uncle Chess, and now it's us to the bright lights, Baby!"

"And nothing but happiness--happiness--happiness!" Martie said, returning his handkerchief, and finishing the talk with one of her eager kisses and with a child's long sigh.

"I was afraid you might be a little sorry about--November, Wallie,"

said she, after a while. "You are glad, a little; aren't you?"

"Sure!" he answered good-naturedly. "You can't help it!"

Martie looked at him strangely, as if she were puzzled or surprised.

Was it her fault? Were women to be blamed for bearing? But she rested her case there, and presently Sally came in, wheeling the baby, and there was a disorderly dinner of sausages and fresh bread and strawberries, with everybody jumping up and sitting down incessantly.

Wallace was a great addition to the little group; they were all young enough to like the pose of lovers, to flush and dimple over the new possessives, over the odd readjustment of relationships. The four went to see the moving pictures in the evening, and came home strewing peanut-sh.e.l.ls on the sidewalk, laughing and talking.

Two little clouds spoiled the long-awaited glory of going to New York for Martie, when early in July she and Wallace really arranged to go.

One was the supper he gave a night or two before they left to various young members of the Hawkes family, Reddy Johnson, and one or two other men. Martie thought it was "silly" to order wine and to attempt a smart affair in the dismal white dining room of the hotel; she resented the opportunity Wallace gave her old friends to see him when he was not at his best. She scolded him for incurring the unnecessary expense.

The second cloud lay in the fact that, without consulting her, he had borrowed money from Rodney Parker. This stung Martie's pride bitterly.

"Wallace, WHY did you?" she asked with difficult self-control.

"Oh, well; it was only a hundred; and he's coining money," Wallace answered easily. "I breezed into the Bank one day, and he was boasting about his job, and his automobile. He took out his bank book and showed me his balance. And all of a sudden it occurred to me I might make a touch. I told him about Dawson." He looked at his wife's dark, resentful face. "Don't you worry, Mart," he said. "YOU didn't borrow it!"

Martie silently resuming her packing reflected upon the irony of life.

She was married, she was going to New York. What a triumphant achievement of her dream of a year ago! And yet her heart was so heavy that she might almost have envied that old, idle Martie, wandering under the trees of Main Street and planning so hopefully for the future.

On the day before she left, exhilarated with the confusion, the new hat she had just bought, the packed trunks, she went to see her mother. It was a strange hour that she spent in the old sitting room, in the cool, stale, home odours, with the home pictures, the jointed gas brackets under which she had played solitaire and the square piano where she had sung "The Two Grenadiers." Outside, in the sunken garden, summer burgeoned fragrantly; the drawn window shades bellied softly to and fro, letting in wheeling spokes of light, shutting down the twilight again. Lydia and her mother, like gentle ghosts, listened to her, reproving and unsympathetic.

"Pa is angry with you, Martie, arid who can blame him?" said Lydia.

"I'm sure I never heard of such actions, coming from a girl who had loving parents and a good home!"

This was the mother's note. Lydia was always an echo.

"It isn't as if you hadn't had everything, Mart. You girls had everything you needed--that party at Thanksgiving and all! And you've no idea of the TALK in town! Pa feels it terribly. To think that other girls, even like Rose, who had no father, should have so much more sense than OUR girls."

Martie talked of Sally's baby. "Named for you, Ma," she told her mother. And with sudden earnestness she added: "WHY don't you go see it some day? It's the dearest baby I ever saw!"

Mrs. Monroe, who had a folded handkerchief in her bony, discoloured fingers, now pressed it to her eyes, shaking her head as she did so.

Lydia gave Martie a resentful look, and her mother a sympathetic one, before she said primly:

"If Sally Monroe wanted Ma and me to go see her and her baby, why didn't she marry some man Pa could have been proud of, and have a church wedding and act in a way becoming to her family?"

To this Martie had nothing to say. She left messages of love for Len and for her father. Her mother and sister came with her for good-byes to the old porch with its peeling dark paint and woody rose-vines.

"Pa said at noon that you had 'phoned you wanted to come say good-bye,"

said her mother mildly. "I hope you'll always be happy, Martie, and remember that we did our best for you. If you're a good girl, and write some day and ask Pa's forgiveness, I think he may come 'round, because he was always a most affectionate father to his children."

The toneless, lifeless voice ceased. Martie kissed Lydia's unresponsive warm cheek, and her mother's flat soft one. She walked quickly down the old garden, through the still rich green, and smelled, as she had smelled a thousand times before, the velvety sweetness of wallflowers.

As she went, she heard her sister say, in a quick, low tone:

"Look, Ma--there's Angela Baxter with that man again. I wonder who on earth he is?"

CHAPTER III

The big train moved smoothly. Martie, her arm laid against the window, felt it thrill her to her heart. She smiled steadily as she watched the group on the platform, and Sally, Joe, and all the others who had come to say good-bye smiled steadily back. Sometimes they shouted messages; but they all were secretly anxious for the train to move, and Martie, for all her smiling and nodding, was in a fever to be gone.

They vanished; all the faces she knew. The big train slid through Monroe. Martie had a last glimpse of Mason and White's--of the bridge--of the winery with its pyramids of sweet-smelling purple refuse. Outlying ranches, familiar from Sunday walks and drives, slipped by. Down near the old Archer ranch, Henry Prout was driving his mother into town. The surrey and the rusty white horse were smothered in sulphurous dust. It seemed odd to Martie that Henny was driving Mrs.

Prout into town with an air of actual importance; Henny was clean, and the old lady had on cotton gloves and a stiff gray percale. Yet they were only going to hot little Monroe. Martie was going to New York!

All her life she remembered the novelty and delight of the trip.

Wallace was at his best; the new hat had its share in the happy recollection. The dining car, the berths, the unchanging routine of the day--all charmed her.

She watched her first thunder storm in Chicago with awed pleasure. The hour came, when, a little jaded, feeling dirty and tumbled, feeling excited and headachy and nervous, Martie saw her neighbours in the car begin to straighten garments and gather small possessions. They were arriving!

She was silent, as first impressions jumbled themselves together in her tired brain. Wallace, at her elbow, was eager with information.

"Look, Mart--this is the Grand Central. They're going to tear all this down! Look--that's the subway--those hoods, where the people are going down! See over that way--this is Forty-Second Street, one of the biggest cross-streets there is--and over that way is Broadway! We can't take the subway, I wish we could--you wait until you see the expresses!

But I'll tell you what we'll do, we'll go over and take a 'bus, on the Avenue--see, here's a Childs'--see, there's the new Library! Climb right up on the 'bus, if you get a chance, because then we can see the Park!"

Bewildered, dirty, tired, she stumbled along at his side, her eyes moving rapidly over the strange crowds, the strange buildings, the strange streets and crossings. That must be an elevated train banging along; here was a park, with men packed on the benches, and newspapers blowing lazily on the paths. And shops in all the bas.e.m.e.nts--why had no one ever told her that there were shops in all the bas.e.m.e.nts? And a placid church facade breaking this array of trimmed windows and crowded little enterprises! It was hot: she felt her forehead wet, her clothes seemed heavy and sticky, and her head ached dully.

"How'd you like it?" Wallace asked enthusiastically.

"I love it, sweetheart!"

Wallace, frankly embarra.s.sed for money, took her at once to Mrs.

Curley's big boarding-house in East Seventieth Street, where the Cluetts had stayed.