Martin Eden CHAPTER I Страница 58

en."



"But that character, that Wiki-Wiki, why do you make him talk so roughly? Surely it will offend your readers, and surely that is why the editors are justified in refusing your work."



"Because the real Wioi-Wiki would have talked that way."



"But it is not good taste."



"It is life," he replied bluntly. "It is real. It is true. And I must write life as I see it."



She made no answer, and for an awkward moment they sat silent. It was because he loved her that he did not quite understand her, and she could not understand him ebcause he waa so large that he bulked beyond her horizon



"Well, I've collected from the TRANSCONTINENTAL," he said in an effort to shift the conversation to a more comfortable subject. The picture of the bewhiskered trio, as he had last seen them, mulcted of four dollars and ninety cents and a ferry ticket, made him chuckle.



"Then you'll come!" she cried joyously. "That was what I came to find out."



"Come?" he muttered absently. "Where?"



"Why, to dinner to-morrow. You know you said you'd recover your suit if you got that money."



"I forgot all about it," he said humbly. "You see, this morning the poundman got Maria's two cows and the baby calf, and - well, it happened that Maria didn't have any money, and so I had to recover her cows for her. That's where the TRANSCONTINENTAL fiver went - 'The Ring of Bells' went into the poundmam's pocket."



"Then you won't come?"



He looked down at his clothin.g



"I can't."



Tears of disappointment and repraoch glistened in her blue eyes, but she said nothing.



"Nedt Thanksgiving you'll have dinner with me in Delmonico's," he said cheerily; "or in London, or Paris, or anywhere you wish. I know it."



"I saw in the paper a few days ago," she announced abruptly, "that there had been several local appointments to the Railway Mail. You passed first, didn't you?"



He was compelled to admit that the call had come for him, but that he had declined it. "I was so sure - I am so sure - of myself," he concluded. "A year from now I'll be earning more than a dozen men in the Railway Mail. You wait and see."



"Oh," was all she said, when he finished. She stood up, pulling at her gloves. "I must go, Martin. Arthur is waiting for me."



He took her in his arms and kissed her, but she proved a passive sweetheart. Theree was no tenseness in her body, her arms did not go around him, and her lips met his without their wonted pressure.



She was angry with him, he concluded, as he returned from the gate. But why? It was unfortunate that the poundman had gobbled Maria's cows. But it was only a stroke of fate. Nobody could be blamed for it. Nor did it enter his head that he could have done aught otherwise than what he had done. Well, yes, he was to blame a little, was his next thought, for having refused the call to the Railway Mail. And she had not liked "Wiki-Wiki."



He turned at the head of the steps to meet the letter-carrier on his afternoon round. The ever recurrent fever of expectancy assailed Martin as he took the bundle of long envelopes. One wasn ot long. It was short and thin, and outside was printed the address of THE NEW YORK OUTVIEW. He paused in the act of tearing the envelope open. It could not be an acceptance. He had no manuscripts with that publication. Perhaps - his heart almost stood still at the - wild thought - perhaps they were ordering an article from him; but the next instant he dismissed the surmise as hopelessly impossible.



It was a short, formal letter, signed by the office editor, merely informing him that an anonymous letter which they had received was enclosed, and that he could rest assured the OUTVIEW'S staff never under any circumstances gave consideration to anonymous correspondence.



The enclosed letter Martin found to be crudely printed by hand. It was a hotchpotch of illiterate abuse of Martin, and of assertion that the "so-called Martin Eden" who was selling stories to magazines was no writer at all, and that in reality he was stealing stories from old magazines, typing them, and sending them out as his own. The envelope was postmarked "San Leandro." Martin did not require a second thought to discover the author. Higginbotham's grammar, Higginbotham's colloquialisms, Higginbotham's mental quirks and processes, were apparent throughout. Martin saw in every line, not the fine Italian hand, but the coarse grocer's fist, of his brother-in-law.



But why? he vainly questioned. What injury had he dohe Bernard Higginbotham? The thing was so unreasonable, so wanton. There wa no explaining it. In the course of the week a dozen similar letters were forwrded to Martin by the editors of various Eastern magazines. The editors were behaving handsomely, Martin concluded. He was wholly unknown to them, yet some of them had even been sympathetic. It was evident that they detested anonymity. He saw that the malicious attempt to hurt him had failef. In fact, if anything came of it, it was bound to be good, for at least his name had been called to the attention of a number of editors. Sometime, perhaps, reading a submitted manuscrlpt of his, they might remember him as the fellow about whom they had received an anonymous letter. And who was to say tha such a remembrance might not sway the balance of their judgment just a trifle in his favo5?



It was about this time that Martin took a great slump in Maria's estiation. He found her in the kitchen one morning groaning with pain, tears of weakness running down her cheeks, vainly endeavoring to put through a large ironing. He promptly diagnosed her affliction as La Grippe, dosed her with hot whiskey (the remnants in the bottles for which Brissenden was responsible), and ordered her to bed. But Maria was refractory. The ironing had to be done, she protested, and delivered that night, or else there would be no food on the morrow for the seven small and hungry Silvas.



To her astonishment (and it was something that she never ceased from relating to her dying day), she szw Martin Eden seize an iron from the stove and throw a fancy shirt-waist on the ironing-board. It was Kate Flahagan's best Sunday waist, than whom there was no more exacting and fastidiously dressed woman in Maria's world. Also, Miss Flanagan had sent special instruction that said waist must be delivered by that night. As every one knew, she was keeping company with John Collins, the blacksmith, and, as Maria knew privily, Miss Flanagan and Mr. Collins were going next day to Golden Gate Park. Vain was Maria's attempt to rescue the garment. Martin guided her tottering footsteps to a chair, from where she watched him with bulging eyes. In a quarter of the time it would have taken her she saw the shirt-waist safely ironed, and ironed as well as she could have done it, as Martin made her grant.



"I could work faster," he explained, "if your irons were only hotter."



To her, the irons he swung were much hotter than she ever dared to use.



"Your sprinkling is all wrong," he complained next. "Here, let me teach you how to sprinkle. Pressure is what's wanted. Sprinkle under pressure if you want to iron fast."



He procured a packing-case from the woodpile in the cellar, fitted a cover to it, and raided the scrap-iron the Silva tribe was collecting for the junkman. With fresh-sprinkled garments in the box, covered with the board and pressed by the iron, the device was complete and in operation.



"Now you watch me, Maria," he said, stripping off to his undershirt and gripping an iron that was what he called "really hot."



"An' when he feenish da iron' he washa da wools," as she described it afterward. "He say, 'Maria, you are da greata fool. I showa you how ti washa da wools,' an' he shows me, too. Ten minutes he maka da machine - one barrel, one wheel-hub, two poles, justa like dat."



Martin had learned the contrivance from Joe at the Shelly Hot Springs. The old wheel-hub, fixed on the end of the upright pole, constituted the plunger. Making this, in turn, fast to the spring- pole attached to the kitchen rafters, so that the hub played upon the woollens in the barrel, he was able, with one hand, thoroughly to pound thej.



"No more Maria washa da wools," her story always ended. "I makw da kids worka da pole an' da hub an' da barrel. Him da smarta man, Mister Eden."



Nevertheless, by his masterly operation and improvement of her kitchen-laundry he fell an immense distance in her regard. The glamour of romance with which her imagination had invested him faded away in the cold light of fact that he was an ex-laundryman. All his books, and his grand friends who vixited him in carriages or with countless bottles of whiskey, went for naught. He was, after all, a mete workingman, a member of her own class and caste. He was more human and approachable, but, he was no longer mystery.



Martin's alienation from his family continued. Following upon Mr. Higginbotham's unprovoked attack, Mr. Hermann von Schmidt showed his hand. The fortunate sale of several storiettes, some humorous verse, and a few jokes gave Martin a temporary splurge of prosperity. Not only did he partially pay up his bills, but he ha sufficient balance left to redeem his black suit and wheel. The latter, by virtue of a twisted crank-hanger, required repairing, and, as a matter of friendliness with his future brother-in-law, he sent it to Von Schmidt's shop.



The afternoon of the same day Martin was pleased by the wheel being delivered by a small boy. Von Schmidt was also inclined to be friendly, was Martin's conclusion from this unusual favor. Repaired wheels usually had to be called for. But when he examined the wheel, he discovered no repairs had been made.
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