She arrived at the house panting and short of breath from the haste
she had made. Apprehensive of trouble, she had stuffed the few
dollars she possessed into her hand-satchel; and so sure was she
that disaster had overtaken her brother, that she stumbled forward,
sobbing, into his arms, at the same time thrusting the satchel
mutely at him.
“I’d have come myself,” he said. “But I didn’t want a row with Mr.
Higginbotham, and that is what would have surely happened.”
“He’ll be all right after a time,” she assured him, while she
wondered what the trouble was that Martin was in. “But you’d best
get a job first an’ steady down. Bernard does like to see a man at
honest work. That stuff in the newspapers broke ‘m all up. I
never saw ‘m so mad before.”
“I’m not going to get a job,” Martin said with a smile. “And you
can tell him so from me. I don’t need a job, and there’s the proof
of it.”
He emptied the hundred gold pieces into her lap in a glinting,
tinkling stream.
“You remember that fiver you gave me the time I didn’t have
carfare? Well, there it is, with ninety-nine brothers of different
ages but all of the same size.”
If Gertrude had been frightened when she arrived, she was now in a
panic of fear. Her fear was such that it was certitude. She was
not suspicious. She was convinced. She looked at Martin in
horror, and her heavy limbs shrank under the golden stream as
though it were burning her.
“It’s yours,” he laughed.
She burst into tears, and began to moan, “My poor boy, my poor
boy!”
He was puzzled for a moment. Then he divined the cause of her
agitation and handed her the Meredith-Lowell letter which had
accompanied the check. She stumbled through it, pausing now and
again to wipe her eyes, and when she had finished, said:-
“An’ does it mean that you come by the money honestly?”
“More honestly than if I’d won it in a lottery. I earned it.”
Slowly faith came back to her, and she reread the letter carefully.
It took him long to explain to her the nature of the transaction
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which had put the money into his possession, and longer still to
get her to understand that the money was really hers and that he
did not need it.
“I’ll put it in the bank for you,” she said finally.
“You’ll do nothing of the sort. It’s yours, to do with as you
please, and if you won’t take it, I’ll give it to Maria. She’ll
know what to do with it. I’d suggest, though, that you hire a
servant and take a good long rest.”
“I’m goin’ to tell Bernard all about it,” she announced, when she
was leaving.
Martin winced, then grinned.
“Yes, do,” he said. “And then, maybe, he’ll invite me to dinner
again.”
“Yes, he will – I’m sure he will!” she exclaimed fervently, as she
drew him to her and kissed and hugged him.
CHAPTER XLII
One day Martin became aware that he was lonely. He was healthy and
strong, and had nothing to do. The cessation from writing and
studying, the death of Brissenden, and the estrangement from Ruth
had made a big hole in his life; and his life refused to be pinned
down to good living in cafes and the smoking of Egyptian
cigarettes. It was true the South Seas were calling to him, but he
had a feeling that the game was not yet played out in the United
States. Two books were soon to be published, and he had more books
that might find publication. Money could be made out of them, and
he would wait and take a sackful of it into the South Seas. He
knew a valley and a bay in the Marquesas that he could buy for a
thousand Chili dollars. The valley ran from the horseshoe, land-
locked bay to the tops of the dizzy, cloud-capped peaks and
contained perhaps ten thousand acres. It was filled with tropical
fruits, wild chickens, and wild pigs, with an occasional herd of
wild cattle, while high up among the peaks were herds of wild goats
harried by packs of wild dogs. The whole place was wild. Not a
human lived in it. And he could buy it and the bay for a thousand
Chili dollars.
The bay, as he remembered it, was magnificent, with water deep
enough to accommodate the largest vessel afloat, and so safe that
the South Pacific Directory recommended it to the best careening
place for ships for hundreds of miles around. He would buy a
schooner – one of those yacht-like, coppered crafts that sailed
like witches – and go trading copra and pearling among the islands.
He would make the valley and the bay his headquarters. He would
build a patriarchal grass house like Tati’s, and have it and the
valley and the schooner filled with dark-skinned servitors. He
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would entertain there the factor of Taiohae, captains of wandering
traders, and all the best of the South Pacific riffraff. He would
keep open house and entertain like a prince. And he would forget
the books he had opened and the world that had proved an illusion.
To do all this he must wait in California to fill the sack with
money. Already it was beginning to flow in. If one of the books
made a strike, it might enable him to sell the whole heap of
manuscripts. Also he could collect the stories and the poems into
books, and make sure of the valley and the bay and the schooner.
He would never write again. Upon that he was resolved. But in the
meantime, awaiting the publication of the books, he must do
something more than live dazed and stupid in the sort of uncaring
trance into which he had fallen.
He noted, one Sunday morning, that the Bricklayers’ Picnic took
place that day at Shell Mound Park, and to Shell Mound Park he
went. He had been to the working-class picnics too often in his
earlier life not to know what they were like, and as he entered the
park he experienced a recrudescence of all the old sensations.
After all, they were his kind, these working people. He had been
born among them, he had lived among them, and though he had strayed
for a time, it was well to come back among them.
“If it ain’t Mart!” he heard some one say, and the next moment a
hearty hand was on his shoulder. “Where you ben all the time? Off
to sea? Come on an’ have a drink.”
It was the old crowd in which he found himself – the old crowd,
with here and there a gap, and here and there a new face. The
fellows were not bricklayers, but, as in the old days, they
attended all Sunday picnics for the dancing, and the fighting, and
the fun. Martin drank with them, and began to feel really human
once more. He was a fool to have ever left them, he thought; and
he was very certain that his sum of happiness would have been
greater had he remained with them and let alone the books and the
people who sat in the high places. Yet the beer seemed not so good
as of yore. It didn’t taste as it used to taste. Brissenden had
spoiled him for steam beer, he concluded, and wondered if, after
all, the books had spoiled him for companionship with these friends
of his youth. He resolved that he would not be so spoiled, and he
went on to the dancing pavilion. Jimmy, the plumber, he met there,
in the company of a tall, blond girl who promptly forsook him for
Martin.
“Gee, it’s like old times,” Jimmy explained to the gang that gave
him the laugh as Martin and the blonde whirled away in a waltz.
“An’ I don’t give a rap. I’m too damned glad to see ‘m back.
Watch ‘m waltz, eh? It’s like silk. Who’d blame any girl?”
But Martin restored the blonde to Jimmy, and the three of them,
with half a dozen friends, watched the revolving couples and
laughed and joked with one another. Everybody was glad to see
Martin back. No book of his been published; he carried no
fictitious value in their eyes. They liked him for himself. He
felt like a prince returned from excile, and his lonely heart
burgeoned in the geniality in which it bathed. He made a mad day
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of it, and was at his best. Also, he had money in his pockets,
and, as in the old days when he returned from sea with a pay-day,
he made the money fly.
Once, on the dancing-floor, he saw Lizzie Connolly go by in the
arms of a young workingman; and, later, when he made the round of