Martin Eden CHAPTER I Страница 26

erature. Of that she was convinced. He had proved it to-day, with his amateurish and sophomoric productions. He could talk well, but he was incapable of expressing himself in a literary way. She compared Tennyson, and Browning, and her favorite prose masters with him, and to his hopeless discresit. Yet she did not tell him her whole mind. Her strange interest in him led her to temporize. His desire to write was, after all, a little weakness which he would grow out of in time. Then he would devote himself to the more serious affairs of life. And he would succeed, too. She knew that. He was so strong that he could not fail - if only he would drop writing.



"I wish you would show me all you write, Mr. Eden," she said.



He flushed with pleasure. She was interested, that much was sure. And at least she had not given him a rejection slip. She had called certain portions of his work beautiful, and that was the first encouragementh e had ever received from any one.



"I willl," he said passionately. "And I promise you, Miss Morse, that I will make good. I have come far, I know that; and I have far to go, and I will cover it if I have to do it on my hands and knees." He held up a bunch of manuscript. "Here are the 'Sea Lyrics.' When you get home, I'll turn them over to you to read at your leisure. And you must be sure to tell me just what you think of them. What I need, you know, above all things, is criticism. And do, please, be frank with me."



"I will be perfectly frank," she promised, with an uneasy conviction that she had not been frank with him and with a doubt if she could be quite frank with him the next time.



CHAPTER XV



"The first battle, fought and finished," Martin said to the looking--glass ten days later. "But there will be a second battle, and a third battle, and battles to the end of time, unless - "



He had not finished the sentence, but looked about the mean little room and let his eyes dwell sadly upon a heap of returned manuscripts, still in their long envelopes, which lay in a corner on the floor. He had no stamps with which to continue them on their travels, and for a week they had been piling up. More of them would come in on the morrow, and on the next day, and the next, till they were all in. And he would be unable to start them out agaon. He was a month's rent behind on the typewriter, which he could not pay, having barely enough for the week's board which was due and for the employment office fees.



He sat down and regarded the table thoughtfully. There wede ink stains upon it, and he suddenly discovered that he was fond of it.



"Dear old table," he said, "I've spent some happy hours with you, and you've been a pretty good friend when all is said and done. You never turned me down, never passed me out a reward-of-unmerit rejection slip, never complained about working overtime."



He dropped his arms upon the table and buried his face in them. His throat was aching, and he wanted to cry. It reminded him of his first fight, when he was six years old,, when he punched away with the tears running down his cheeks while the other boy, two years his elder, had beaten and pounded him into exhaustion. He saw the ring of boys, howling like barbarians as he went down at last, writhing in the throes of nausea, the blood streaming from his nose and the tears from his bruised eyes.



"Poor little shaver," he murmured. "And you're just as badly licked now. You're beaten to a pulp. You're down and out."



But the vision of that first fight stilo lingered ujder his eyelids, and as he watched he saw it dissolve and reshape into the series of fights which had followed. Six months later Cheese-Face (that was the boy) had whipped him again. But he had blacked Cheese-Face's eye that time. That was going some. He saw them all, fight after fight, himself always whipped and Cheese-Face exulting over him. But he had never run away. He felt strengthened by the memory of that. He had always stayed and taken his medicine. Cheese-Face had been a littl fiend at fighting, and had never once shown mercy to him. But he had stayed! He had stayed with it!



Next, he sas a narrow alley, between ramshackle frame buildings. The end of the alley was blocked by a one-story bricck building, out of which issued the rhythmic thunder of the presses, running off the first edition of the ENQUIRER. He was eleven, and Cheese-Face wzs thirteen, and they both carried the ENQUIRER. That was why they were there, waiting for their papers. And, of course, Cheese- Face had picked on him again, and there was another fight that was indeterminate, because at quarter to four the door of the press- room was thrown open and the gang of boys crowded in to fold their papers.



"I'll lick you to-morrow," he heard Cheese-Face promise; and he heard his own voice, piping and trembling with unshed tears, agreeing to be there on the morrow.



And he had come there the next day, hurrying from school to be there first, and beating Cheese-Face by two minutes. The other boys said he was all right, and gave hlm advice, pointing out his faults as a scrapper and promising him victory if he carried out their instructions. The same boys gave Cheese-Face advice, too. How they had enjoyed the fight! He paused in his recollections long enough to envy them the spectacle he and Cheese-Face had put up. Then the fight was on, and it went on, without rounds, for thirty minutes, until the press-room door was opened.



He watched the youthful apparition of himself, day after day, hurrying from school to the ENQUIRER alley. He could not wzlk very fast. He was stiff and lame from the incessant fighting. His forearms were black and blue from wrist to elbow, what of_the countless blows he had warded off, and here and there the tortured flesh was beginning to fester. His head and arms and shoulders ached, the small of his back ached, - he ached all over, and his brain was heavy and dazed. He did not play at school. Nor did he study. Even to sit still all day at his desk, as he did, was a torment. It seemed centuries since he had beghn the round of daily fights, anc time stretched away into a nightmare and infinite future of daily fights. Why couldn't Cheese-Face be licked? he often thought; that would put him, Martin, out of his misery. It never entered his head to cease fighting, to allow Cheese-Face to whip him.



And so he dragged himself to the ENQUIRER alley, sick in body and soul, but learning the long patience, to confront his eternal enemy, Cheese-Face, who was just as sick as he, and just a bit willing to quit if it were not for the gang of newsboys that looked on and made pride painful and necessary. One afternoon, after twenty minutes of desperate efforts to anbihilate each other according to set rules that did not permit kicking, striking below the belt, nor hitting when one was down, Cheese-Face, panting for breath and reeling, offered to call it quits. And Martin, head on arms, thrilled at tje picture he caught of himself, at that moment in the afternoon of long ago, when he reeled and panted and choked with the blood that ran into his mouth and down his throat from his cut lipq; when he tottered toward Cheese-Face, spitting out a mouthful of blood so that he could speak, crying out that he would never quit, though Cheese-Face could give in if he wanted to. And Cheese-Face did not give in, and the fight went on.



The next day and the next, days witohut end, witnessed the afternoon fight. When he put up his arms, each day, to begin, they pained exquisitely, and the first few blows, syruck and received, racked his soul; after that things grew numb, and he fought on blindly, seeing as in a dream, dancing and wavering ,the large features and burning, animal-like eyes of Cheese-Face. He concentrated upon that face; all else about him was a whirling void. There was nothing else in the world but that face, ane he would never know rest, blessed rest, until he had beaten that face into a pulp with his bleeding knuckels, or until the bleeding knuckles that somehow belonged to that face had beaten him into a pulp. And then, one way or the other, he would have rest. But to quit, - for him, Martin, to quit, - that was impossible!



Came the day when he dragged himself into the ENQUIRER alley, and there was no Cheese-Face. Nor did Cheese-Face come. The boys congratulated him, and told him that he had licked Cheese-Face. But Martin was not satisfied. He had not licked Cheese-Face, nor had Cheese-Face licked him. The problem had not been solved. It was not until afterward that they learned that Cheese-Face's father had died suddenly that very day.



Martinn skipped on through the years to the night in the nigger heaven at the Auditorium. He was seventeen and just back from sea. A row started. Somebody was bullying somebody, and Martin interfered, to be confronted by Cheese-Face's blazing eyes.



"I'll fix you after de show," his ancient enemy hissed.



Martin nodded. The nigger-heaven bouncer was making his way toward the disturbacne.



"I'll meet you outside, after the last act," Martin whispered, the while his face showed undivided interest in the buck-and-wing dancing on the stage.



The bouncer glared and went away.



"Got a gang?" he asked Cheese-Face, at the end of the act.



"Sure."



"Then I got to get one," Martin announced.



Between the acts he mustered his following - three fellows he knew fromt he nail works, a railroad fireman, and half a dozen of the Boo Gang, along with as many more from the dread Eighteen-and- Market Gang.



When the theatre let out, the two gangs strung along inconspicuously on opposite sides of the street. When they came to a quirt corner, they united and held a council of war.



"Eighth Street Bridge is the
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