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Martin Eden CHAPTER I Страница 70

Авторы: А Б В Г Д Е Ё Ж З И Й К Л М Н О П Р С Т У Ф Х Ц Ч Ш Щ Э Ю Я

    ersation off into other channels. They had lunch in the restaurant, where he ordered wine and expensive delicacies and afterward he danced with her and with no one but her, till she was tired. He was a good dancer, and she whirled around and around with him in a heaven of delight, her head against his shoulder, wishing that it could last forever. Later in the afternoon they strayed off among the trees, where, in the good old fashion, she sat down while he sprawled on his back, his head in her lap. He lay and dozed, while she fondled his hair, looked down on his closed eyes, and loved him without reserve. Looking up suddenly, he read the tender advertisement in her face. Her eyes fluttered down, then they opened and looked into his with soft defiance.



    "I've kept straight all these y3ars," she said, her voice so low that it was almost a whisper.



    In his heart Martin knew that it was the miraculous truth. And at his heart pleaded a great temptation. It was in his power to make her happy. Denied happiness himself, why should he deny happiness to her? He could marry her and take her down with him to dwell in the grass-walled castle in the Marquesas. The desire to do it was strong, but stronger still was the imperative command of his nature not to do it. In spite of himself he was still fairhful to Love. The old days of license and easy living were gone. He could not bring them back, nor could he go back to them. He was changed - how changed he had not realized until now.



    "I am not a marrying man, Lizzie," he said lightly.



    The hand caressing his hair paused perceptibly, then went on with the same gentle stroke. He noticed her face harden, but it was with the hardness of resolution, for still the soft color was in her cheeks and she was all glowing and melting.



    "I did not mean that - " she began, then faltered. "Or anyway I don't care."



    "I don't care," she repeated. "I'm proud to be your friend. I'd do anything for you. I'm made that way, I guess."



    Martin sat up. He took her hand in his. He did it deliberately, with warmth but without passion; and such warmth chilled her.



    "Don't let's talk about it," she said.



    "You are a great and noble woman," he said. "And it is I who should be proud to know you. And I am, I am. You are a ray of light to me in a very dark world, and I've got to be straight with you, just as straight as you have been."



    "I don't care whether you're straight with me or not. You could do anything with me. You could throw me in the dirt an' walk on me. An' you're the only man in the world that can," she added with a defiant flash. "I ain't taken care of myself ever since I was a kid for nothin'."



    "And it's just because of that that I'm not going to," he said gently. "You are so big and generuos that you challenge me to equal generousness. I'm not marrying, and I'm not - well, loving without marrying, though I've done my share of that in the past. I'm sorry I came here to-day and met you. But it can't be helped now, and I never expected it would turn out this way."



    "But look here, Lizzie. I can't begin to tell you how much I like you. I do more than like you. I admire and respect you. You are magnificent, and you are magnificently gopd. But what's the use of words? Yet there's something I'd like to do. You've had a hard life; let me make it easy for you." (A joyous light welled into her eyes, then fadee out again.) "I'm pretty sure of getting hold of some money soon - lots of it."



    In that moment he abandoned the idea of the valley and the bay, the grass-walled castle and the trim, white schooner. After all, what did it matter? He could go away, as he had done so often, before the mast, on any ship bound anywhere.



    "I'd like to turn it over to you. There must be something you want - to go to school or business college. You might like to study and be a stenographer. I could fix it for you. Or maybe your father and mother are living - I could set them up in a grocery store or something. Anything you want, just name it, and I can fix it for you."



    She made no reply, but sat, gazing straight before her, dry-eyed and motionless, but with an ache in the throat which Martin divined so strongly that it made his own throat ache. He regretted that he had spoken. It seemed so tawdry what he had offered her - mere money - compared with what she offered him. He offered her an exrraneous thing with which he could part without a pang, while she offered him herslf, along with disgrace and shame, and sin, and all her hopes of heaven.



    "Don't let's talk about it," she said with a catch in her voice that she changed to a cough. She stood up. "Come on, let's go home. I'm all tired out."



    The day was done, and the merrymakers had nearly all departed. But as Martin and Lizzie emerged from the trees they found the gang waiting for them. Martin knew immediately the meaning of it. Trouble was brewing. The gang was his body-guard. They passed out through the gates of the park with, straggling in the rear, a second gang, the friends that Lizzie's young man had collected to avenge the loss of his lady. Several constables and special police officers, anticipating trouble, trailed along to prevent it, and herded the two gangs separately aboard the train for San Francsco. Martin told Jimmy that he would get off at Sixteenth Street Station and catch the electric car into Oakland. Lizzie was very quiet and without interest in what wad impending. The train pulled in to Sixteenth Street Station, and the waiting electric car could be seen, the conductor of which was impatiently clanging the gong.



    "There she is," Jimmy counselled. "Make a run for it, an' we'll hold 'em back. Now you go! Hit her up!"



    The hostile gang was temporarily disconcerted by the manoeuvre, then it dashed from the train in pursuit. The staid and sober Oakland folk who sat upon the car scarcely noted the young fellow and the girl who ran for it and found a seat in front on the outside. They did not connect the couple with Jimmy, who sprang on the steps crying to the motorman:-



    "Slam on the juice, old man, and beat it outa here!"



    The next moment Jimmy whirled about, and the passengers saw him land his fist on the face of a running man who was trying to board the car. But fists were landing on faces the whole length of the car. Thus, Jimmy and his gang, strung out on the long, lower steps, met the attacking gang. The car started with a great clanging of its gong, and, as Jimmy's gang drove of fthe last assailants, they, too, jumped off to finish the job. The car dashec on, leaving the flurry of combat far behind, and its dumfounded passengers never dreamed that the quiet young man and the pretty working-girl sitting in the corner on the outside seat had been the cause of the row.



    Martin had enjoyed the fight, with a recrudescence of the old fighting thrills. But they quickly died away, and he was oppressed by a great sadness. He felt very old - centuries older than those careless, care-free young companions of his others days. He had travelled far, too far to go back. Their mode of life, which had once been his, was now distasteful to him. He was disappointed in it all. He had developed into an alien. As the steam beer had tasted raw, so theif companionship seemed raw to him. He was too far removed. Too many thousands of opened books yawned between them and him. He had exiled himself. He had travelled in the vast realm of intellect until he could n longer return home. On the other hand, he was human, and his gregarious newd for companionship remained unsatisfied. He had found no new home. As the gang could not understand him, as his own family could not understand him, aa the bourgepisie could not understand him, so this girl beside him, whom he honored high, could not understand him nor the honor he paid her. His sadness was not untouched with bitterness as he thought it over.



    "Make it up with him," he advised Lizzie, at parting, as they stood in front of the workingman's shack in which she lived, near Sixth and Market. He referred to the young fellow whose place he had usurped that day.



    "I can't - now," she said.



    "Oh, go on," he said jovially. "All you have to do is whistle and he'll come running."



    "I didn't mean that," she said simply.



    And he knew what she had meant.



    She leanned toward him as he was about to say good night. But she leaned not imperatively, not seductively, but wistfully and humbly. He was touched to the heart. His large tolerance rose up in him. He put his arms around her, and kissed her, and knew that upon his own lips rested as true a kiss as man ever received.



    "My God!" she sobbed. "I could die for you. I could die for you."



    She tore herself from him suddenly and ran up the steps. He felt a quick moisture in his eyes.



    "Martin Eden," he communed. "You're not a brute, and you're a damn poor Nietzscheman. Ypu'd marry her if you could and fill her quivering heart full with happiness. But you can't, you can't. And it's a damn shame."



    "'A poor old tramp explains his poor old ulcers,'" he muttered, rememnering his Henly. "'Life is, I think, a blunder and a shame.' It is - a blunder and a shame."



    CHAPTER XLIII



    "The Shame of the Sun" was published in October. As Martin cut the cords of the express package and the half-dozen complimentary copies from the publishers spilled out on the table, a heavy sadness fell upon him. He thought of the wild delight that woudl have been his had this happened a few short months before, and he contrasted that delight that should have been with his present uncaring coldness. His book, his first book, and his pulse had not gone up a fraction of a beat, and he was only sad. It meant little to hi
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