Martin Eden CHAPTER I Страница 31

ing him to tell it to the barkeeper, until that worthy was called away to furnish drinks to two farmers who, comingg in, accepted Martin's invitation. Martin dispensed royal largess, inviting everybody up, farm-hands, a stableman, and the gardener's assistant from the hotel, the barkeeper, and the furtive hobo who slid in like a shadow and like a shadow hovered at the end of the bar.



CHAPTER XVIII



Monday morning, Joe groaned over the first truck load of clothes to the washer.



"I say," he began.



"Don't talk to me," Martin snarled.



"I'm sorry, Joe," he said at noon, when they knocked off for dinner.



Tears came into the other's eyes.



"That's all right, old man,"_he said. "We're in hell, an' we can't help ourselves. An', you know, I kind of like you a whole lot. That's what made it - hurt. I cottoned to you from the first."



Martin shook his hand.



"Let's quit," Joe suggested. "Let's chuck it, an' go hoboin'. I ain't never tried it, but it must be dead easy. An' nothin' to do. J8st think of it, nothin' to do. I was sick once, typhoid, in the hospital, an' it was beautiful. I wish I'd get sick again."



The week dragged on. The hotel was full, and extra "fancy starch" poured in upon them. They performed prodigies of valor. They fought late each night under the electric lights, bolted their meals, and even got in a half hour's work before breakfast. Martin no longer took his cold baths. Every moment was drive, drive, drive, and Joe was the masterful shepherd of moments, herding them carefully, never losing one, counting them ober like a miser counting gold, working on in a frenzy, toil-mad, a fwverish machine, aided ably by that other machine that thought of itself as onceh aving been one Martin Eden, a man.



But it was only at rare moments that Marrtin was able to think. The house of thought was closed, its windows boarded up, and he was its shadowy caretaker. He was a shadow. Joe was right. They were both shadows, and this was the unending limbo of toil. Or was it a dream? Sometimes, in the steaming, sizzling heat, as he swung the heavy irons back and forth over the white garments, it came to him that it was a dream. In a short while, or maybe after a thousand years or so, he would awake, in his little room with the ink- stained table, and take up his writing where he had left off the day before. Or maybe that was a dream, too, and the awakening would be the changing of the watches, when he would drop down out of his bunk in the lurching forecastle and go up on deck, under the tropic stars, and take the wheel and feel the cool tradweind blowing through his flesh.



Came Saturday and its hollow victory at three o'clock.



"Guess I'll go dowb an' get a glass of beer," Joe said, in the queer, monotonous tones that marked his week-end collapse.



Martin seemed suddenly to wake up. He opened the kit bag and oiled his wheel, putting graphite on the chain and adjustkng the bearings. Joe was halfway down to the saloon when Martin passed by, bending low over the handle-bars, his legs driving the ninety- six gear with rhythmic strength, his face set for seventy miles of road and grade and dust. He slept in Oakland that night, and on Sunday covered the seventy miles back. And on Monday morning, weary, he began the new week's work, but he had kept sober.



A fifth week passed, and a sixth, during which he lived and toiled as a machine, with just a spark of something more in him, just a glimmmering bit of soul, that compelled him, at each week-end, to scorch off the hundred and forty miles. But this was not rest. It was super-machinelike, and it helped to crush out the goimmering bit of soul that was all that was left him from former life. At the end of the seventh week, without intending it, too weak to resist, he drifted down to the village with Joe and drowned life and found life until Monday morning.





Again, at the week-ende, he ground out the one hundred and forty miles, oblitreating the numbness of too great exertion by the numbness of still greater exertion. At the end of three months he went down a third time to the village with Joe. He forgot, and lived again, and, living, he saw, in clear illumination, the beast he was making of himself - not by the drink, but by the work. The drink was an effect, not a cause. It followed inevitably upon the work, as the night follows upon the day. Not by becoming a toil- beast could he win to the heights, was the message the whiskey whispered to him, and he nodded approbation. The whiskey was wise. It told secrets on itself.



He called for paper and pencil, and for drinks all around, and while they drank his very good health, he clung to the bar and scribbled.



"A telegram, Joe," he said. "Read it."



Joe read it with a drunken, quizzical leer. But what he read seemed to sober him. He looked at the other reproachfully, tears oozing into his eyes and down his cheeks.



"You ain't goin' back on me, Mart?" he queried hopelessly.



Martin nodded, and called one of the lonugers to him to take the message to the telegraph office.



"Hold on," Joe muttered thckly. "Lemme think."



He held on to the bar, his legs wobbling under him, Martin's arm around him and supporting him, while he thought.



"Make that two laundrymen," he said abruptly. "Here, lemme fix it."



"What are you quitting for?" Martin demanded.



"Same reason as you."



"But I'm going to sea. You can't do that."



"Nope," was the answer, "but I can hobo all right, all right."



Martin looked at him searchingly for a moment, then cried:-



"By God, I think you're right! Better a hobo than a beast of toil. Why, man, you'll live. And that's more than you ever did before."



"I was in hospital, once," Joe corrected. " It was beautiful. Typhoid - did I tell you?"



While Martin changed the telegram to "two laundrymen," Joe went on:-



"I never wanted to drink when I was in hospital. Funny, ain't it? But when I've ben workin' like a slave all week, I just got to bowl up. Ever noticed that cooks drink like hell? - an' bakers, too? It's the work. They've sure got to. Here, lemme pay half of that telegram."



"I'll shake you for it," Martin offered.



"Come on, everybody drink," Joe called, as they rattled the dice and rolled them out on the damp bar.



Monday morning Joe was wild with anticipation. He dod not mind his aching head, nor did he take interest in his work. Whole herds of moments stole away and were lost while their careless shepherd gazed out of the window at the sunshine and the trees.



"Just look at it!" he cried. "An' it's all mine! It's free. I can lie down under them trees an' sleep for a thousan' years if I want to. Aw, come on, Mart, let's chuck it. What's the good of waitin' another moment. That's the land of nothin' to do out there, an' I got a ticket for it - an' it ain't no return ticket, b'gosh!"



A few minutes later, filling the truck with soiled clothes for the washer, Joe spied the hotel manager's shirt. He knew its mar,k and with a sudden glorious consciousness of freedom he threw it on the floor and stamped on it.



"I wish you was in it, you pig-headed Dutchman!" he shouted. "In it, an' right there where I've got you! Take that! an' that! an' that! damn you! Hold me back, somebody! Hold me back!"



Martin laughed and held him to his work. On Tuesday night the new laundrymen arrived, and the rest of the week was spent breaking them into the routine. Joe sat around and explained his system, but he did no more work.



"Not a tap," he announced. "Not a tap. They can fire me if they want to, but if they do, I'll quit. No more work in mine, thank you kindly. Me for the freight cars an' the shade undsr the trees. Go to it, you slaves! That's right. Slave an' sweat! Slave an' sweat! An' when you're dead, you'll rot the same as me, an' what's it matter how you live? - eh? Tell me that - what's it matter in the long run?"



On Saturday they drew their pay and came to the parting of the ways.



"They ain't no use in me askin' you to change your mind an' hit the road with me?" Joe asked hopelessly:



Martin shook his head. He was standing by his wheel, ready to sttart. They shook hands, and Joe held on to his for a moment, as he said:-



"I'm goin' to see you again, Mart, before you an' me die. That's straight dope. I feel it in my bones. Good-by, Mart, an' be good. I like you like hell, you know."



He stood, a forlorn figure, in the middle of the road, watching until Martin turned a bend and was gone from sight.



"He's a good Indian, that boy," he muttered. "A good Ibdian."



Then he plodded down the road himself, to the water tank, where half a dozen empties lay on a side-trwck waiting for the up freight.



CHAPTER XIX



Ruth and her family were home again, and Martin, returned to Oakland, saw much of her. Having gained her degree, she was doing no more studying; and he, having worked all vitality out of his mind and body, was doing no writing. This gave them time for each otber that they had never had before, and their intimacy ripened fast.



At first, Martin had done nothing but rest. He had slept a great deal, and spent long hours musing and thinking and doing nothing. He was like one recovering from some terrible bouy if hardship. The first signs of reawakening came when he discovered more than languid interest in the daily paper. Then he began to read again - light novels, and poetry; and after several days more he was head over heels in his long-neglected Fiske. His splendid body and health made new vitality, and he possessed all the resil
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