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.
CHAPTER XVII
Martin learned to do many things. In the course of the first week,
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in one afternoon, he and Joe accounted for the two hundred white
shirts. Joe ran the tiler, a machine wherein a hot iron was hooked
on a steel string which furnished the pressure. By this means he
ironed the yoke, wristbands, and neckband, setting the latter at
right angles to the shirt, and put the glossy finish on the bosom.
As fast as he finished them, he flung the shirts on a rack between
him and Martin, who caught them up and “backed” them. This task
consisted of ironing all the unstarched portions of the shirts.
It was exhausting work, carried on, hour after hour, at top speed.
Out on the broad verandas of the hotel, men and women, in cool
white, sipped iced drinks and kept their circulation down. But in
the laundry the air was sizzling. The huge stove roared red hot
and white hot, while the irons, moving over the damp cloth, sent up
clouds of steam. The heat of these irons was different from that
used by housewives. An iron that stood the ordinary test of a wet
finger was too cold for Joe and Martin, and such test was useless.
They went wholly by holding the irons close to their cheeks,
gauging the heat by some secret mental process that Martin admired
but could not understand. When the fresh irons proved too hot,
they hooked them on iron rods and dipped them into cold water.
This again required a precise and subtle judgment. A fraction of a
second too long in the water and the fine and silken edge of the
proper heat was lost, and Martin found time to marvel at the
accuracy he developed – an automatic accuracy, founded upon
criteria that were machine-like and unerring.
But there was little time in which to marvel. All Martin’s
consciousness was concentrated in the work. Ceaselessly active,
head and hand, an intelligent machine, all that constituted him a
man was devoted to furnishing that intelligence. There was no room
in his brain for the universe and its mighty problems. All the
broad and spacious corridors of his mind were closed and
hermetically sealed. The echoing chamber of his soul was a narrow
room, a conning tower, whence were directed his arm and shoulder
muscles, his ten nimble fingers, and the swift-moving iron along
its steaming path in broad, sweeping strokes, just so many strokes
and no more, just so far with each stroke and not a fraction of an
inch farther, rushing along interminable sleeves, sides, backs, and
tails, and tossing the finished shirts, without rumpling, upon the
receiving frame. And even as his hurrying soul tossed, it was
reaching for another shirt. This went on, hour after hour, while
outside all the world swooned under the overhead California sun.
But there was no swooning in that superheated room. The cool
guests on the verandas needed clean linen.
The sweat poured from Martin. He drank enormous quantities of
water, but so great was the heat of the day and of his exertions,
that the water sluiced through the interstices of his flesh and out
at all his pores. Always, at sea, except at rare intervals, the
work he performed had given him ample opportunity to commune with
himself. The master of the ship had been lord of Martin’s time;
but here the manager of the hotel was lord of Martin’s thoughts as
well. He had no thoughts save for the nerve-racking, body-
destroying toil. Outside of that it was impossible to think. He
did not know that he loved Ruth. She did not even exist, for his
driven soul had no time to remember her. It was only when he
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crawled to bed at night, or to breakfast in the morning, that she
asserted herself to him in fleeting memories.
“This is hell, ain’t it?” Joe remarked once.
Martin nodded, but felt a rasp of irritation. The statement had
been obvious and unnecessary. They did not talk while they worked.
Conversation threw them out of their stride, as it did this time,
compelling Martin to miss a stroke of his iron and to make two
extra motions before he caught his stride again.
On Friday morning the washer ran. Twice a week they had to put
through hotel linen, – the sheets, pillow-slips, spreads, table-
cloths, and napkins. This finished, they buckled down to “fancy
starch.” It was slow work, fastidious and delicate, and Martin did
not learn it so readily. Besides, he could not take chances.
Mistakes were disastrous.
“See that,” Joe said, holding up a filmy corset-cover that he could
have crumpled from view in one hand. “Scorch that an’ it’s twenty
dollars out of your wages.”
So Martin did not scorch that, and eased down on his muscular
tension, though nervous tension rose higher than ever, and he
listened sympathetically to the other’s blasphemies as he toiled
and suffered over the beautiful things that women wear when they do
not have to do their own laundrying. “Fancy starch” was Martin’s
nightmare, and it was Joe’s, too. It was “fancy starch” that
robbed them of their hard-won minutes. They toiled at it all day.
At seven in the evening they broke off to run the hotel linen
through the mangle. At ten o’clock, while the hotel guests slept,
the two laundrymen sweated on at “fancy starch” till midnight, till
one, till two. At half-past two they knocked off.
Saturday morning it was “fancy starch,” and odds and ends, and at
three in the afternoon the week’s work was done.
“You ain’t a-goin’ to ride them seventy miles into Oakland on top
of this?” Joe demanded, as they sat on the stairs and took a
triumphant smoke.
“Got to,” was the answer.
“What are you goin’ for? – a girl?”
“No; to save two and a half on the railroad ticket. I want to
renew some books at the library.”
“Why don’t you send ’em down an’ up by express? That’ll cost only
a quarter each way.”
Martin considered it.
“An’ take a rest to-morrow,” the other urged. “You need it. I
know I do. I’m plumb tuckered out.”
He looked it. Indomitable, never resting, fighting for seconds and
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minutes all week, circumventing delays and crushing down obstacles,
a fount of resistless energy, a high-driven human motor, a demon
for work, now that he had accomplished the week’s task he was in a
state of collapse. He was worn and haggard, and his handsome face
drooped in lean exhaustion. He pulled his cigarette spiritlessly,
and his voice was peculiarly dead and monotonous. All the snap and
fire had gone out of him. His triumph seemed a sorry one.
“An’ next week we got to do it all over again,” he said sadly.
“An’ what’s the good of it all, hey? Sometimes I wish I was a
hobo. They don’t work, an’ they get their livin’. Gee! I wish I
had a glass of beer; but I can’t get up the gumption to go down to
the village an’ get it. You’ll stay over, an’ send your books dawn
by express, or else you’re a damn fool.”
“But what can I do here all day Sunday?” Martin asked.
“Rest. You don’t know how tired you are. Why, I’m that tired
Sunday I can’t even read the papers. I was sick once – typhoid.
In the hospital two months an’ a half. Didn’t do a tap of work all
that time. It was beautiful.”
“It was beautiful,” he repeated dreamily, a minute later.
Martin took a bath, after which he found that the head laundryman
had disappeared. Most likely he had gone for a glass of beer
Martin decided, but the half-mile walk down to the village to find
out seemed a long journey to him. He lay on his bed with his shoes
off, trying to make up his mind. He did not reach out for a book.