“I’m sick, Maria,” he said weakly. “What is it? Do you know?”
“Grip,” she answered. “Two or three days you alla da right.
Better you no eat now. Bimeby plenty can eat, to-morrow can eat
maybe.”
Martin was not used to sickness, and when Maria and her little girl
left him, he essayed to get up and dress. By a supreme exertion of
will, with rearing brain and eyes that ached so that he could not
keep them open, he managed to get out of bed, only to be left
stranded by his senses upon the table. Half an hour later he
managed to regain the bed, where he was content to lie with closed
eyes and analyze his various pains and weaknesses. Maria came in
several times to change the cold cloths on his forehead. Otherwise
she left him in peace, too wise to vex him with chatter. This
moved him to gratitude, and he murmured to himself, “Maria, you
getta da milka ranch, all righta, all right.”
Then he remembered his long-buried past of yesterday.
It seemed a life-time since he had received that letter from the
TRANSCONTINENTAL, a life-time since it was all over and done with
and a new page turned. He had shot his bolt, and shot it hard, and
now he was down on his back. If he hadn’t starved himself, he
wouldn’t have been caught by La Grippe. He had been run down, and
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he had not had the strength to throw off the germ of disease which
had invaded his system. This was what resulted.
“What does it profit a man to write a whole library and lose his
own life?” he demanded aloud. “This is no place for me. No more
literature in mine. Me for the counting-house and ledger, the
monthly salary, and the little home with Ruth.”
Two days later, having eaten an egg and two slices of toast and
drunk a cup of tea, he asked for his mail, but found his eyes still
hurt too much to permit him to read.
“You read for me, Maria,” he said. “Never mind the big, long
letters. Throw them under the table. Read me the small letters.”
“No can,” was the answer. “Teresa, she go to school, she can.”
So Teresa Silva, aged nine, opened his letters and read them to
him. He listened absently to a long dun from the type-writer
people, his mind busy with ways and means of finding a job.
Suddenly he was shocked back to himself.
“‘We offer you forty dollars for all serial rights in your story,'”
Teresa slowly spelled out, “‘provided you allow us to make the
alterations suggested.'”
“What magazine is that?” Martin shouted. “Here, give it to me!”
He could see to read, now, and he was unaware of the pain of the
action. It was the WHITE MOUSE that was offering him forty
dollars, and the story was “The Whirlpool,” another of his early
horror stories. He read the letter through again and again. The
editor told him plainly that he had not handled the idea properly,
but that it was the idea they were buying because it was original.
If they could cut the story down one-third, they would take it and
send him forty dollars on receipt of his answer.
He called for pen and ink, and told the editor he could cut the
story down three-thirds if he wanted to, and to send the forty
dollars right along.
The letter despatched to the letter-box by Teresa, Martin lay back
and thought. It wasn’t a lie, after all. The WHITE MOUSE paid on
acceptance. There were three thousand words in “The Whirlpool.”
Cut down a third, there would be two thousand. At forty dollars
that would be two cents a word. Pay on acceptance and two cents a
word – the newspapers had told the truth. And he had thought the
WHITE MOUSE a third-rater! It was evident that he did not know the
magazines. He had deemed the TRANSCONTINENTAL a first-rater, and
it paid a cent for ten words. He had classed the WHITE MOUSE as of
no account, and it paid twenty times as much as the
TRANSCONTINENTAL and also had paid on acceptance.
Well, there was one thing certain: when he got well, he would not
go out looking for a job. There were more stories in his head as
good as “The Whirlpool,” and at forty dollars apiece he could earn
far more than in any job or position. Just when he thought the
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battle lost, it was won. He had proved for his career. The way
was clear. Beginning with the WHITE MOUSE he would add magazine
after magazine to his growing list of patrons. Hack-work could be
put aside. For that matter, it had been wasted time, for it had
not brought him a dollar. He would devote himself to work, good
work, and he would pour out the best that was in him. He wished
Ruth was there to share in his joy, and when he went over the
letters left lying on his bed, he found one from her. It was
sweetly reproachful, wondering what had kept him away for so
dreadful a length of time. He reread the letter adoringly,
dwelling over her handwriting, loving each stroke of her pen, and
in the end kissing her signature.
And when he answered, he told her recklessly that he had not been
to see her because his best clothes were in pawn. He told her that
he had been sick, but was once more nearly well, and that inside
ten days or two weeks (as soon as a letter could travel to New York
City and return) he would redeem his clothes and be with her.
But Ruth did not care to wait ten days or two weeks. Besides, her
lover was sick. The next afternoon, accompanied by Arthur, she
arrived in the Morse carriage, to the unqualified delight of the
Silva tribe and of all the urchins on the street, and to the
consternation of Maria. She boxed the ears of the Silvas who
crowded about the visitors on the tiny front porch, and in more
than usual atrocious English tried to apologize for her appearance.
Sleeves rolled up from soap-flecked arms and a wet gunny-sack
around her waist told of the task at which she had been caught. So
flustered was she by two such grand young people asking for her
lodger, that she forgot to invite them to sit down in the little
parlor. To enter Martin’s room, they passed through the kitchen,
warm and moist and steamy from the big washing in progress. Maria,
in her excitement, jammed the bedroom and bedroom-closet doors
together, and for five minutes, through the partly open door,
clouds of steam, smelling of soap-suds and dirt, poured into the
sick chamber.
Ruth succeeded in veering right and left and right again, and in
running the narrow passage between table and bed to Martin’s side;
but Arthur veered too wide and fetched up with clatter and bang of
pots and pans in the corner where Martin did his cooking. Arthur
did not linger long. Ruth occupied the only chair, and having done
his duty, he went outside and stood by the gate, the centre of
seven marvelling Silvas, who watched him as they would have watched
a curiosity in a side-show. All about the carriage were gathered
the children from a dozen blocks, waiting and eager for some tragic
and terrible denouement. Carriages were seen on their street only
for weddings and funerals. Here was neither marriage nor death:
therefore, it was something transcending experience and well worth
waiting for.
Martin had been wild to see Ruth. His was essentially a love-
nature, and he possessed more than the average man’s need for
sympathy. He was starving for sympathy, which, with him, meant
intelligent understanding; and he had yet to learn that Ruth’s
sympathy was largely sentimental and tactful, and that it proceeded
from gentleness of nature rather than from understanding of the
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objects of her sympathy. So it was while Martin held her hand and
gladly talked, that her love for him prompted her to press his hand
in return, and that her eyes were moist and luminous at sight of
his helplessness and of the marks suffering had stamped upon his
face.
But while he told her of his two acceptances, of his despair when
he received the one from the TRANSCONTINENTAL, and of the
corresponding delight with which he received the one from the WHITE
MOUSE, she did not follow him. She heard the words he uttered and
understood their literal import, but she was not with him in his
despair and his delight. She could not get out of herself. She
was not interested in selling stories to magazines. What was
important to her was matrimony. She was not aware of it, however,