Thus Sally, kneeling among the books, her earnest, pretty, young face turned toward the doctor, her eyes widely opened, as the extraordinary jumble of words poured forth. The unpleasant sensation of their last meeting, the confusing feeling that she was not saying what Dr. Ben wanted her to say, beset her. She felt a sudden, dreadful inclination toward tears, although with no clear sense of a reason for crying.
"I suppose all boys go through their silly stages like measles," said Sally rapidly. "And it"s only my misfortune and Joe"s that his first love affair had to be me. One reason why I haven"t mentioned it at home is--"
"Then you don"t care for Joe?" the old man asked with his serious smile.
"Oh, Dr. Ben! Of course, I like Joe enormously, he"s a dear sweet boy,"
Sally answered smoothly. "But you know as well as I do how my father feels toward the village people in Monroe, and while the Hawkeses are just as nice as they can be in their way--" again Sally"s flow of eloquence was strangely shaken; she felt as a child might, caught up in the arm of a much larger person and rushed along helplessly with only an occasional heartening touch of her feet to the ground--"after all, that isn"t quite our way, is it?" she asked. If only, thought the nervous little girl who was Sally, if only she knew what Dr. Ben wanted her to say!
"Why can"t ye be honest with me, Sally?" said the doctor. "Ye love Joe, don"t ye?"
Sally"s head dropped, the colour rose in her cheeks, and the tears came. She nodded, and through all her body ran a delicious thrill at the acknowledged pa.s.sion.
"Ye"ve found each other out, in spite of them all!" said the old man musingly. "And what does his age or yours, or his place or yours, matter beside that? They"ve tried to fill you with lies, and you"ve found that the lies don"t hold water. Well--"
He straightened up suddenly, and began to march about the room. Sally, kneeling still over the books, tears drying on her cheeks, watched him.
"Sally," said the doctor, "G.o.d made you and Joe Hawkes and your love for each other. I don"t know who made the social laws by which women govern these little towns, but I suspect it was the devil. You"ve been brought up to feel that if you marry a man Mrs. Cy Frost doesn"t ask to her house, you"ll be unhappy ever after. But I ask you, Sally--I ask you as a man old enough to be your father--if you had your home, your husband, your health, your garden, and your children, wouldn"t you be a far happier woman than--than Lydia say, or Florence Frost, or all the other girls who sit about this town waiting for a man with position enough--position, BAH!--to marry?"
Sally"s face was glowing.
"Oh, Dr. Ben, _I_ don"t care anything about position!" she said, all her honest innocence in her face.
"Then why do you act as if you did?" he said, well pleased.
"And would you advise me to marry Joe?" she asked radiantly.
"Joe--Tom--Billy, whomever you please!" he answered impatiently. "But don"t be afraid because he doesn"t wear silk socks, Sally, or smoke a monogrammed cigarette. Why, my child, that little polish, that little fineness, is the woman"s gift to her man! These Frosts and Parkers: it was the coa.r.s.e strength of their grandfathers that got them across 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, "n.o.body"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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sing 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, pa.s.sing 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 dispa.s.sionately.