الفصل الفصل 34 · Chapter XXXIV

. Chapter XXXIV

Arthur remained at the gate while Ruth climbed Maria’s front steps. She

heard the rapid click of the type-writer, and when Martin let her in,

found him on the last page of a manuscript. She had come to make

certain whether or not he would be at their table for Thanksgiving

dinner; but before she could broach the subject Martin plunged into the

one with which he was full.

“Here, let me read you this,” he cried, separating the carbon copies

and running the pages of manuscript into shape. “It’s my latest, and

different from anything I’ve done. It is so altogether different that I

am almost afraid of it, and yet I’ve a sneaking idea it is good. You be

judge. It’s an Hawaiian story. I’ve called it ‘Wiki-wiki.’”

His face was bright with the creative glow, though she shivered in the

cold room and had been struck by the coldness of his hands at greeting.

She listened closely while he read, and though he from time to time had

seen only disapprobation in her face, at the close he asked:-

“Frankly, what do you think of it?”

“I—I don’t know,” she, answered. “Will it—do you think it will sell?”

“I’m afraid not,” was the confession. “It’s too strong for the

magazines. But it’s true, on my word it’s true.”

“But why do you persist in writing such things when you know they won’t

sell?” she went on inexorably. “The reason for your writing is to make

a living, isn’t it?”

“Yes, that’s right; but the miserable story got away with me. I

couldn’t help writing it. It demanded to be written.”

“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 Wiki-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 because he was 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 poundman’s pocket.”

“Then you won’t come?”

He looked down at his clothing.

“I can’t.”

Tears of disappointment and reproach glistened in her blue eyes, but

she said nothing.

“Next 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. There 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 was not 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 done Bernard

Higginbotham? The thing was so unreasonable, so wanton. There was no

explaining it. In the course of the week a dozen similar letters were

forwarded 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 failed. 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 manuscript of

his, they might remember him as the fellow about whom they had received

an anonymous letter. And who was to say that such a remembrance might

not sway the balance of their judgment just a trifle in his favor?

It was about this time that Martin took a great slump in Maria’s

estimation. 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 saw Martin Eden seize an iron from the

stove and throw a fancy shirt-waist on the ironing-board. It was Kate

Flanagan’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 to

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 them.

“No more Maria washa da wools,” her story always ended. “I maka 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 visited him in carriages or with countless

bottles of whiskey, went for naught. He was, after all, a mere

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 had 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. A little later in the day he

telephoned his sister’s betrothed, and learned that that person didn’t

want anything to do with him in “any shape, manner, or form.”

“Hermann von Schmidt,” Martin answered cheerfully, “I’ve a good mind to

come over and punch that Dutch nose of yours.”

“You come to my shop,” came the reply, “an’ I’ll send for the police.

An’ I’ll put you through, too. Oh, I know you, but you can’t make no

rough-house with me. I don’t want nothin’ to do with the likes of you.

You’re a loafer, that’s what, an’ I ain’t asleep. You ain’t goin’ to do

no spongin’ off me just because I’m marryin’ your sister. Why don’t you

go to work an’ earn an honest livin’, eh? Answer me that.”

Martin’s philosophy asserted itself, dissipating his anger, and he hung

up the receiver with a long whistle of incredulous amusement. But after

the amusement came the reaction, and he was oppressed by his

loneliness. Nobody understood him, nobody seemed to have any use for

him, except Brissenden, and Brissenden had disappeared, God alone knew

where.

Twilight was falling as Martin left the fruit store and turned

homeward, his marketing on his arm. At the corner an electric car had

stopped, and at sight of a lean, familiar figure alighting, his heart

leapt with joy. It was Brissenden, and in the fleeting glimpse, ere the

car started up, Martin noted the overcoat pockets, one bulging with

books, the other bulging with a quart bottle of whiskey.