their pay, and he had wasted two years over it. But he would
disgorge the bait now. Not another line would he ever write. He
would do what Ruth wanted him to do, what everybody wanted him to
do – get a job. The thought of going to work reminded him of Joe –
Joe, tramping through the land of nothing-to-do. Martin heaved a
great sigh of envy. The reaction of nineteen hours a day for many
days was strong upon him. But then, Joe was not in love, had none
of the responsibilities of love, and he could afford to loaf
through the land of nothing-to-do. He, Martin, had something to
work for, and go to work he would. He would start out early next
morning to hunt a job. And he would let Ruth know, too, that he
had mended his ways and was willing to go into her father’s office.
Five dollars for five thousand words, ten words for a cent, the
market price for art. The disappointment of it, the lie of it, the
infamy of it, were uppermost in his thoughts; and under his closed
eyelids, in fiery figures, burned the “$3.85” he owed the grocer.
He shivered, and was aware of an aching in his bones. The small of
his back ached especially. His head ached, the top of it ached,
the back of it ached, the brains inside of it ached and seemed to
be swelling, while the ache over his brows was intolerable. And
beneath the brows, planted under his lids, was the merciless
“$3.85.” He opened his eyes to escape it, but the white light of
the room seemed to sear the balls and forced him to close his eyes,
when the “$3.85” confronted him again.
Five dollars for five thousand words, ten words for a cent – that
particular thought took up its residence in his brain, and he could
no more escape it than he could the “$3.85” under his eyelids. A
change seemed to come over the latter, and he watched curiously,
till “$2.00” burned in its stead. Ah, he thought, that was the
baker. The next sum that appeared was “$2.50.” It puzzled him,
and he pondered it as if life and death hung on the solution. He
owed somebody two dollars and a half, that was certain, but who was
it? To find it was the task set him by an imperious and malignant
universe, and he wandered through the endless corridors of his
mind, opening all manner of lumber rooms and chambers stored with
odds and ends of memories and knowledge as he vainly sought the
answer. After several centuries it came to him, easily, without
effort, that it was Maria. With a great relief he turned his soul
to the screen of torment under his lids. He had solved the
problem; now he could rest. But no, the “$2.50” faded away, and in
its place burned “$8.00.” Who was that? He must go the dreary
round of his mind again and find out.
How long he was gone on this quest he did not know, but after what
seemed an enormous lapse of time, he was called back to himself by
a knock at the door, and by Maria’s asking if he was sick. He
replied in a muffled voice he did not recognize, saying that he was
merely taking a nap. He was surprised when he noted the darkness
of night in the room. He had received the letter at two in the
afternoon, and he realized that he was sick.
Then the “$8.00” began to smoulder under his lids again, and he
returned himself to servitude. But he grew cunning. There was no
need for him to wander through his mind. He had been a fool. He
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pulled a lever and made his mind revolve about him, a monstrous
wheel of fortune, a merry-go-round of memory, a revolving sphere of
wisdom. Faster and faster it revolved, until its vortex sucked him
in and he was flung whirling through black chaos.
Quite naturally he found himself at a mangle, feeding starched
cuffs. But as he fed he noticed figures printed in the cuffs. It
was a new way of marking linen, he thought, until, looking closer,
he saw “$3.85” on one of the cuffs. Then it came to him that it
was the grocer’s bill, and that these were his bills flying around
on the drum of the mangle. A crafty idea came to him. He would
throw the bills on the floor and so escape paying them. No sooner
thought than done, and he crumpled the cuffs spitefully as he flung
them upon an unusually dirty floor. Ever the heap grew, and though
each bill was duplicated a thousand times, he found only one for
two dollars and a half, which was what he owed Maria. That meant
that Maria would not press for payment, and he resolved generously
that it would be the only one he would pay; so he began searching
through the cast-out heap for hers. He sought it desperately, for
ages, and was still searching when the manager of the hotel
entered, the fat Dutchman. His face blazed with wrath, and he
shouted in stentorian tones that echoed down the universe, “I shall
deduct the cost of those cuffs from your wages!” The pile of cuffs
grew into a mountain, and Martin knew that he was doomed to toil
for a thousand years to pay for them. Well, there was nothing left
to do but kill the manager and burn down the laundry. But the big
Dutchman frustrated him, seizing him by the nape of the neck and
dancing him up and down. He danced him over the ironing tables,
the stove, and the mangles, and out into the wash-room and over the
wringer and washer. Martin was danced until his teeth rattled and
his head ached, and he marvelled that the Dutchman was so strong.
And then he found himself before the mangle, this time receiving
the cuffs an editor of a magazine was feeding from the other side.
Each cuff was a check, and Martin went over them anxiously, in a
fever of expectation, but they were all blanks. He stood there and
received the blanks for a million years or so, never letting one go
by for fear it might be filled out. At last he found it. With
trembling fingers he held it to the light. It was for five
dollars. “Ha! Ha!” laughed the editor across the mangle. “Well,
then, I shall kill you,” Martin said. He went out into the wash-
room to get the axe, and found Joe starching manuscripts. He tried
to make him desist, then swung the axe for him. But the weapon
remained poised in mid-air, for Martin found himself back in the
ironing room in the midst of a snow-storm. No, it was not snow
that was falling, but checks of large denomination, the smallest
not less than a thousand dollars. He began to collect them and
sort them out, in packages of a hundred, tying each package
securely with twine.
He looked up from his task and saw Joe standing before him juggling
flat-irons, starched shirts, and manuscripts. Now and again he
reached out and added a bundle of checks to the flying miscellany
that soared through the roof and out of sight in a tremendous
circle. Martin struck at him, but he seized the axe and added it
to the flying circle. Then he plucked Martin and added him.
Martin went up through the roof, clutching at manuscripts, so that
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by the time he came down he had a large armful. But no sooner down
than up again, and a second and a third time and countless times he
flew around the circle. From far off he could hear a childish
treble singing: “Waltz me around again, Willie, around, around,
around.”
He recovered the axe in the midst of the Milky Way of checks,
starched shirts, and manuscripts, and prepared, when he came down,
to kill Joe. But he did not come down. Instead, at two in the
morning, Maria, having heard his groans through the thin partition,
came into his room, to put hot flat-irons against his body and damp
cloths upon his aching eyes.
CHAPTER XXVI
Martin Eden did not go out to hunt for a job in the morning. It
was late afternoon before he came out of his delirium and gazed
with aching eyes about the room. Mary, one of the tribe of Silva,
eight years old, keeping watch, raised a screech at sight of his
returning consciousness. Maria hurried into the room from the
kitchen. She put her work-calloused hand upon his hot forehead and
felt his pulse.
“You lika da eat?” she asked.
He shook his head. Eating was farthest from his desire, and he
wondered that he should ever have been hungry in his life.