Martie The Unconquered | Page 6

of
sleeping and eating.
But there was another Martie--a sensitive, ambitious Martie--who
despised idleness, dependence, and inaction; who longed to live a
thousand lives--to conquer all the world; a Martie who was one day a
great singer, one day a wartime nurse, one day a millionaire's beautiful
bride, the mother of five lovely children, all carefully named. She
would waken from her dreams almost bewildered, blinking at Sally or
at her mother in the surprised fashion that sometimes made folk call
Martie stupid, humbly enough she thought of herself as stupid, too. She
never suspected that she was really "dreaming true," that the power and
the glory lay waiting for the touch of her heart and hand and brain. She
never suspected that she was to Rose and Grace and Sally what a
clumsy young swan would be in a flock of bustling and competent
ducks. Martie did not know, yet, where her kingdom lay, how should
she ever dream that she was to find it?
Rose was going back to stay with her cousin in Berkeley to-morrow, it
was understood, and so had to get home early this afternoon. Rose, as
innocent as a butterfly of ambition or of the student's zeal, had finished
her first year in the State University and was to begin her second
to-morrow.
Monroe's shabby Main Street seemed less interesting than ever when
Rose had tripped away. A gusty breeze was blowing fitfully, whisking
bits of straw and odds and ends of paper about. The watering cart went
by, leaving a cool wake of shining mud. Here and there a surrey, loaded
with stout women in figured percales, and dusty, freckled children,
started on its trip from Main Street back to some outlying ranch.
As the three girls, arms linked, loitered across the square, Dr. Ben
Scott--who was Rose Ransome's mother's cousin and was regarded as
an uncle--came out of the Court House and walked toward his buggy.
The dreaming white mare roused as she heard his voice, and the old
brown-and-white setter sprang into the seat beside him.

"Howdy, girls!" said the old man, his big loose figure bulging
grotesquely over the boundaries of the seat. "Father pretty well?"
"Well enough, Doc' Ben, but not pretty!" Martie said, laughing. The
doctor's eyes twinkled.
"They put a tongue in your head, Martie, sure enough!" he said,
gathering up the reins.
"It was all they did put, then!" Martie giggled.
The girls all liked Doc' Ben. A widower, rich enough now to take only
what practice he pleased, simple in his tastes, he lived with his old
servant, his horse and cow, his dog and cat, chickens and bees, pigeons
and rabbits, in a comfortable, shabby establishment in an unfashionable
part of town. Monroe described him as a "regular character." His
jouncing, fat figure--with tobacco ash spilled on his spotted vest, and
stable mud on his high-laced boots--was familiar in all her highways
and byways. His mellow voice, shot with humorous undertones even
when he was serious, touched with equal readiness upon Plato, the
habits of bees, the growth of fungus, fashions, Wordsworth, the Civil
War, or the construction of chimneys. He was something of a
philosopher, something of a poet, something of a reformer.
Martie, watching him out of sight, said to herself that she really must
go down soon and see old Dr. Ben, poke among his old books, feed his
pigeons, and scold him for his untidy ways. The girl's generous
imagination threw a veil of romance over his life; she told Sally that he
was like some one in an English story.
After he had gone, the girls idled into the Town Library, a large room
with worn linoleum on the floor, and with level sunlight streaming in
the dusty windows. At the long table devoted to magazines a few
readers were sitting; others hovered over the table where books just
returned were aligned; and here and there, before the dim bookcases
that lined the walls, still others loitered, now and then picking a book
from the shelves, glancing at it, and restoring it to its place. The room
was warm and close with the smell of old books. The whisking of

pages, and occasionally a sibilant whisper, were its only sounds. From
the ceiling depended signs, bearing the simple command: "Silence"; but
this did not prevent the girls from whispering to the energetic,
gray-haired woman who presided at the desk.
"Hello, girls!" said Miss Fanny Breck cheerfully, in the low tone she
always used in the library. "Want anything to read? You don't? What
are you reading, Martie?"
"I'm reading 'Idylls of the King,'" Sally said.
"I've got 'Only the Governess,'" added Grace.
"I didn't ask either of you," Miss Breck said with the brisk amused air
of correction that made the