บทที่ บทที่ 16 · Chapter XVI

. Chapter XVI

The alarm-clock went off, jerking Martin out of sleep with a suddenness

that would have given headache to one with less splendid constitution.

Though he slept soundly, he awoke instantly, like a cat, and he awoke

eagerly, glad that the five hours of unconsciousness were gone. He

hated the oblivion of sleep. There was too much to do, too much of life

to live. He grudged every moment of life sleep robbed him of, and

before the clock had ceased its clattering he was head and ears in the

washbasin and thrilling to the cold bite of the water.

But he did not follow his regular programme. There was no unfinished

story waiting his hand, no new story demanding articulation. He had

studied late, and it was nearly time for breakfast. He tried to read a

chapter in Fiske, but his brain was restless and he closed the book.

To-day witnessed the beginning of the new battle, wherein for some time

there would be no writing. He was aware of a sadness akin to that with

which one leaves home and family. He looked at the manuscripts in the

corner. That was it. He was going away from them, his pitiful,

dishonored children that were welcome nowhere. He went over and began

to rummage among them, reading snatches here and there, his favorite

portions. “The Pot” he honored with reading aloud, as he did

“Adventure.” “Joy,” his latest-born, completed the day before and

tossed into the corner for lack of stamps, won his keenest approbation.

“I can’t understand,” he murmured. “Or maybe it’s the editors who can’t

understand. There’s nothing wrong with that. They publish worse every

month. Everything they publish is worse—nearly everything, anyway.”

After breakfast he put the type-writer in its case and carried it down

into Oakland.

“I owe a month on it,” he told the clerk in the store. “But you tell

the manager I’m going to work and that I’ll be in in a month or so and

straighten up.”

He crossed on the ferry to San Francisco and made his way to an

employment office. “Any kind of work, no trade,” he told the agent; and

was interrupted by a new-comer, dressed rather foppishly, as some

workingmen dress who have instincts for finer things. The agent shook

his head despondently.

“Nothin’ doin’ eh?” said the other. “Well, I got to get somebody

to-day.”

He turned and stared at Martin, and Martin, staring back, noted the

puffed and discolored face, handsome and weak, and knew that he had

been making a night of it.

“Lookin’ for a job?” the other queried. “What can you do?”

“Hard labor, sailorizing, run a type-writer, no shorthand, can sit on a

horse, willing to do anything and tackle anything,” was the answer.

The other nodded.

“Sounds good to me. My name’s Dawson, Joe Dawson, an’ I’m tryin’ to

scare up a laundryman.”

“Too much for me.” Martin caught an amusing glimpse of himself ironing

fluffy white things that women wear. But he had taken a liking to the

other, and he added: “I might do the plain washing. I learned that much

at sea.” Joe Dawson thought visibly for a moment.

“Look here, let’s get together an’ frame it up. Willin’ to listen?”

Martin nodded.

“This is a small laundry, up country, belongs to Shelly Hot

Springs,—hotel, you know. Two men do the work, boss and assistant. I’m

the boss. You don’t work for me, but you work under me. Think you’d be

willin’ to learn?”

Martin paused to think. The prospect was alluring. A few months of it,

and he would have time to himself for study. He could work hard and

study hard.

“Good grub an’ a room to yourself,” Joe said.

That settled it. A room to himself where he could burn the midnight oil

unmolested.

“But work like hell,” the other added.

Martin caressed his swelling shoulder-muscles significantly. “That came

from hard work.”

“Then let’s get to it.” Joe held his hand to his head for a moment.

“Gee, but it’s a stem-winder. Can hardly see. I went down the line last

night—everything—everything. Here’s the frame-up. The wages for two is

a hundred and board. I’ve ben drawin’ down sixty, the second man forty.

But he knew the biz. You’re green. If I break you in, I’ll be doing

plenty of your work at first. Suppose you begin at thirty, an’ work up

to the forty. I’ll play fair. Just as soon as you can do your share you

get the forty.”

“I’ll go you,” Martin announced, stretching out his hand, which the

other shook. “Any advance?—for rail-road ticket and extras?”

“I blew it in,” was Joe’s sad answer, with another reach at his aching

head. “All I got is a return ticket.”

“And I’m broke—when I pay my board.”

“Jump it,” Joe advised.

“Can’t. Owe it to my sister.”

Joe whistled a long, perplexed whistle, and racked his brains to little

purpose.

“I’ve got the price of the drinks,” he said desperately. “Come on, an’

mebbe we’ll cook up something.”

Martin declined.

“Water-wagon?”

This time Martin nodded, and Joe lamented, “Wish I was.”

“But I somehow just can’t,” he said in extenuation. “After I’ve ben

workin’ like hell all week I just got to booze up. If I didn’t, I’d cut

my throat or burn up the premises. But I’m glad you’re on the wagon.

Stay with it.”

Martin knew of the enormous gulf between him and this man—the gulf the

books had made; but he found no difficulty in crossing back over that

gulf. He had lived all his life in the working-class world, and the

_camaraderie_ of labor was second nature with him. He solved the

difficulty of transportation that was too much for the other’s aching

head. He would send his trunk up to Shelly Hot Springs on Joe’s ticket.

As for himself, there was his wheel. It was seventy miles, and he could

ride it on Sunday and be ready for work Monday morning. In the meantime

he would go home and pack up. There was no one to say good-by to. Ruth

and her whole family were spending the long summer in the Sierras, at

Lake Tahoe.

He arrived at Shelly Hot Springs, tired and dusty, on Sunday night. Joe

greeted him exuberantly. With a wet towel bound about his aching brow,

he had been at work all day.

“Part of last week’s washin’ mounted up, me bein’ away to get you,” he

explained. “Your box arrived all right. It’s in your room. But it’s a

hell of a thing to call a trunk. An’ what’s in it? Gold bricks?”

Joe sat on the bed while Martin unpacked. The box was a packing-case

for breakfast food, and Mr. Higginbotham had charged him half a dollar

for it. Two rope handles, nailed on by Martin, had technically

transformed it into a trunk eligible for the baggage-car. Joe watched,

with bulging eyes, a few shirts and several changes of underclothes

come out of the box, followed by books, and more books.

“Books clean to the bottom?” he asked.

Martin nodded, and went on arranging the books on a kitchen table which

served in the room in place of a wash-stand.

“Gee!” Joe exploded, then waited in silence for the deduction to arise

in his brain. At last it came.

“Say, you don’t care for the girls—much?” he queried.

“No,” was the answer. “I used to chase a lot before I tackled the

books. But since then there’s no time.”

“And there won’t be any time here. All you can do is work an’ sleep.”

Martin thought of his five hours’ sleep a night, and smiled. The room

was situated over the laundry and was in the same building with the

engine that pumped water, made electricity, and ran the laundry

machinery. The engineer, who occupied the adjoining room, dropped in to

meet the new hand and helped Martin rig up an electric bulb, on an

extension wire, so that it travelled along a stretched cord from over

the table to the bed.

The next morning, at quarter-past six, Martin was routed out for a

quarter-to-seven breakfast. There happened to be a bath-tub for the

servants in the laundry building, and he electrified Joe by taking a

cold bath.

“Gee, but you’re a hummer!” Joe announced, as they sat down to

breakfast in a corner of the hotel kitchen.

With them was the engineer, the gardener, and the assistant gardener,

and two or three men from the stable. They ate hurriedly and gloomily,

with but little conversation, and as Martin ate and listened he

realized how far he had travelled from their status. Their small mental

caliber was depressing to him, and he was anxious to get away from

them. So he bolted his breakfast, a sickly, sloppy affair, as rapidly

as they, and heaved a sigh of relief when he passed out through the

kitchen door.

It was a perfectly appointed, small steam laundry, wherein the most

modern machinery did everything that was possible for machinery to do.

Martin, after a few instructions, sorted the great heaps of soiled

clothes, while Joe started the masher and made up fresh supplies of

soft-soap, compounded of biting chemicals that compelled him to swathe

his mouth and nostrils and eyes in bath-towels till he resembled a

mummy. Finished the sorting, Martin lent a hand in wringing the

clothes. This was done by dumping them into a spinning receptacle that

went at a rate of a few thousand revolutions a minute, tearing the

water from the clothes by centrifugal force. Then Martin began to

alternate between the dryer and the wringer, between times “shaking

out” socks and stockings. By the afternoon, one feeding and one

stacking up, they were running socks and stockings through the mangle

while the irons were heating. Then it was hot irons and underclothes

till six o’clock, at which time Joe shook his head dubiously.

“Way behind,” he said. “Got to work after supper.” And after supper

they worked until ten o’clock, under the blazing electric lights, until

the last piece of under-clothing was ironed and folded away in the

distributing room. It was a hot California night, and though the

windows were thrown wide, the room, with its red-hot ironing-stove, was

a furnace. Martin and Joe, down to undershirts, bare armed, sweated and

panted for air.

“Like trimming cargo in the tropics,” Martin said, when they went

upstairs.

“You’ll do,” Joe answered. “You take hold like a good fellow. If you

keep up the pace, you’ll be on thirty dollars only one month. The

second month you’ll be gettin’ your forty. But don’t tell me you never

ironed before. I know better.”

“Never ironed a rag in my life, honestly, until to-day,” Martin

protested.

He was surprised at his weariness when he got into his room, forgetful

of the fact that he had been on his feet and working without let up for

fourteen hours. He set the alarm clock at six, and measured back five

hours to one o’clock. He could read until then. Slipping off his shoes,

to ease his swollen feet, he sat down at the table with his books. He

opened Fiske, where he had left off to read. But he found trouble and

began to read it through a second time. Then he awoke, in pain from his

stiffened muscles and chilled by the mountain wind that had begun to

blow in through the window. He looked at the clock. It marked two. He

had been asleep four hours. He pulled off his clothes and crawled into

bed, where he was asleep the moment after his head touched the pillow.

Tuesday was a day of similar unremitting toil. The speed with which Joe

worked won Martin’s admiration. Joe was a dozen of demons for work. He

was keyed up to concert pitch, and there was never a moment in the long

day when he was not fighting for moments. He concentrated himself upon

his work and upon how to save time, pointing out to Martin where he did

in five motions what could be done in three, or in three motions what

could be done in two. “Elimination of waste motion,” Martin phrased it

as he watched and patterned after. He was a good workman himself, quick

and deft, and it had always been a point of pride with him that no man

should do any of his work for him or outwork him. As a result, he

concentrated with a similar singleness of purpose, greedily snapping up

the hints and suggestions thrown out by his working mate. He “rubbed

out” collars and cuffs, rubbing the starch out from between the double

thicknesses of linen so that there would be no blisters when it came to

the ironing, and doing it at a pace that elicited Joe’s praise.

There was never an interval when something was not at hand to be done.

Joe waited for nothing, waited on nothing, and went on the jump from

task to task. They starched two hundred white shirts, with a single

gathering movement seizing a shirt so that the wristbands, neckband,

yoke, and bosom protruded beyond the circling right hand. At the same

moment the left hand held up the body of the shirt so that it would not

enter the starch, and at the same moment the right hand dipped into the

starch—starch so hot that, in order to wring it out, their hands had to

thrust, and thrust continually, into a bucket of cold water. And that

night they worked till half-past ten, dipping “fancy starch”—all the

frilled and airy, delicate wear of ladies.

“Me for the tropics and no clothes,” Martin laughed.

“And me out of a job,” Joe answered seriously. “I don’t know nothin’

but laundrying.”

“And you know it well.”

“I ought to. Began in the Contra Costa in Oakland when I was eleven,

shakin’ out for the mangle. That was eighteen years ago, an’ I’ve never

done a tap of anything else. But this job is the fiercest I ever had.

Ought to be one more man on it at least. We work to-morrow night.

Always run the mangle Wednesday nights—collars an’ cuffs.”

Martin set his alarm, drew up to the table, and opened Fiske. He did

not finish the first paragraph. The lines blurred and ran together and

his head nodded. He walked up and down, batting his head savagely with

his fists, but he could not conquer the numbness of sleep. He propped

the book before him, and propped his eyelids with his fingers, and fell

asleep with his eyes wide open. Then he surrendered, and, scarcely

conscious of what he did, got off his clothes and into bed. He slept

seven hours of heavy, animal-like sleep, and awoke by the alarm,

feeling that he had not had enough.

“Doin’ much readin’?” Joe asked.

Martin shook his head.

“Never mind. We got to run the mangle to-night, but Thursday we’ll

knock off at six. That’ll give you a chance.”

Martin washed woollens that day, by hand, in a large barrel, with

strong soft-soap, by means of a hub from a wagon wheel, mounted on a

plunger-pole that was attached to a spring-pole overhead.

“My invention,” Joe said proudly. “Beats a washboard an’ your knuckles,

and, besides, it saves at least fifteen minutes in the week, an’

fifteen minutes ain’t to be sneezed at in this shebang.”

Running the collars and cuffs through the mangle was also Joe’s idea.

That night, while they toiled on under the electric lights, he

explained it.

“Something no laundry ever does, except this one. An’ I got to do it if

I’m goin’ to get done Saturday afternoon at three o’clock. But I know

how, an’ that’s the difference. Got to have right heat, right pressure,

and run ’em through three times. Look at that!” He held a cuff aloft.

“Couldn’t do it better by hand or on a tiler.”

Thursday, Joe was in a rage. A bundle of extra “fancy starch” had come

in.

“I’m goin’ to quit,” he announced. “I won’t stand for it. I’m goin’ to

quit it cold. What’s the good of me workin’ like a slave all week,

a-savin’ minutes, an’ them a-comin’ an’ ringin’ in fancy-starch extras

on me? This is a free country, an’ I’m to tell that fat Dutchman what I

think of him. An’ I won’t tell ’m in French. Plain United States is

good enough for me. Him a-ringin’ in fancy starch extras!”

“We got to work to-night,” he said the next moment, reversing his

judgment and surrendering to fate.

And Martin did no reading that night. He had seen no daily paper all

week, and, strangely to him, felt no desire to see one. He was not

interested in the news. He was too tired and jaded to be interested in

anything, though he planned to leave Saturday afternoon, if they

finished at three, and ride on his wheel to Oakland. It was seventy

miles, and the same distance back on Sunday afternoon would leave him

anything but rested for the second week’s work. It would have been

easier to go on the train, but the round trip was two dollars and a

half, and he was intent on saving money.