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Elisha Cuthbert Photos Books: Martin Eden The Pickwick Papers The Sea Wolf |
He suddenly saw the aristocracy of the people who did not
labor. It towered before him on the wall, a figure in brass, arrogant
and powerful. He had worked himself; his first memories seemed connected
with work, and all his family had worked. There was Gertrude. When her
hands were not hard from the endless housework, they were swollen and red
like boiled beef, what of the washing. And there was his sister Marian.
She had worked in the cannery the preceding summer, and her slim, pretty
hands were all scarred with the tomato-knives. Besides, the tips of two
of her fingers had been left in the cutting machine at the paper-box
factory the preceding winter. He remembered the hard palms of his mother
as she lay in her coffin. And his father had worked to the last fading
gasp; the horned growth on his hands must have been half an inch thick
when he died. But Her hands were soft, and her mothers hands, and her
brothers. This last came to him as a surprise; it was tremendously
indicative of the highness of their caste, of the enormous distance that
stretched between her and him.
He sat back on the bed with a bitter laugh, and finished taking off his
shoes. He was a fool; he had been made drunken by a womans face and by
a womans soft, white hands. And then, suddenly, before his eyes, on the
foul plaster-wall appeared a vision. He stood in front of a gloomy
tenement house. It was night-time, in the East End of London, and before
him stood Margey, a little factory girl of fifteen. He had seen her home
after the bean-feast. She lived in that gloomy tenement, a place not fit
for swine. His hand was going out to hers as he said good night. She
had put her lips up to be kissed, but he wasnt going to kiss her.
Somehow he was afraid of her. And then her hand closed on his and
pressed feverishly. He felt her callouses grind and grate on his, and a
great wave of pity welled over him. He saw her yearning, hungry eyes,
and her ill-fed female form which had been rushed from childhood into a
frightened and ferocious maturity; then he put his arms about her in
large tolerance and stooped and kissed her on the lips. Her glad little
cry rang in his ears, and he felt her clinging to him like a cat. Poor
little starveling! He continued to stare at the vision of what had
happened in the long ago. His flesh was crawling as it had crawled that
night when she clung to him, and his heart was warm with pity. It was a
gray scene, greasy gray, and the rain drizzled greasily on the pavement
stones. And then a radiant glory shone on the wall, and up through the
other vision, displacing it, glimmered Her pale face under its crown of
golden hair, remote and inaccessible as a star.
He took the Browning and the Swinburne from the chair and kissed them.
Just the same, she told me to call again, he thought. He took another
look at himself in the glass, and said aloud, with great solemnity:-
"Martin Eden, the first thing to-morrow you go to the free library an
read up on etiquette. Understand!"
He turned off the gas, and the springs shrieked under his body.
"But youve got to quit cussin, Martin, old boy; youve got to quit
cussin," he said aloud.
Then he dozed off to sleep and to dream dreams that for madness and
audacity rivalled those of poppy-eaters.
CHAPTER V He awoke next morning from rosy scenes of dream to a steamy atmosphere that smelled of soapsuds and dirty clothes, and that was vibrant with the jar and jangle of tormented life. As he came out of his room he heard the slosh of water, a sharp exclamation, and a resounding smack as his sister visited her irritation upon one of her numerous progeny. The squall of the child went through him like a knife. He was aware that the whole thing, the very air he breathed, was repulsive and mean. How different, he thought, from the atmosphere of beauty and repose of the house wherein Ruth dwelt. Martin Eden page 17 Martin Eden page 19 |