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flushed again.
"And you say ben for been," she continued; "come for came; and
the way you chop your endings is something dreadful."
"How do you mean?" He leaned forward, feeling that he ought to get down
on his knees before so marvellous a mind. "How do I chop?"
"You dont complete the endings. A-n-d spells and. You pronounce it
an. I-n-g spells ing. Sometimes you pronounce it ing and
sometimes you leave off the g. And then you slur by dropping initial
letters and diphthongs. T-h-e-m spells them. You pronounce it--oh,
well, it is not necessary to go over all of them. What you need is the
grammar. Ill get one and show you how to begin."
As she arose, there shot through his mind something that he had read in
the etiquette books, and he stood up awkwardly, worrying as to whether he
was doing the right thing, and fearing that she might take it as a sign
that he was about to go.
"By the way, Mr. Eden," she called back, as she was leaving the room.
"What is _booze_? You used it several times, you know."
"Oh, booze," he laughed. "Its slang. It means whiskey an
beer--anything that will make you drunk."
"And another thing," she laughed back. "Dont use you when you are
impersonal. You is very personal, and your use of it just now was not
precisely what you meant."
"I dont just see that."
"Why, you said just now, to me, whiskey and beer--anything that will
make you drunk--make me drunk, dont you see?"
"Well, it would, wouldnt it?"
"Yes, of course," she smiled. "But it would be nicer not to bring me
into it. Substitute one for you and see how much better it sounds."
When she returned with the grammar, she drew a chair near his--he
wondered if he should have helped her with the chair--and sat down beside
him. She turned the pages of the grammar, and their heads were inclined
toward each other. He could hardly follow her outlining of the work he
must do, so amazed was he by her delightful propinquity. But when she
began to lay down the importance of conjugation, he forgot all about her.
He had never heard of conjugation, and was fascinated by the glimpse he
was catching into the tie-ribs of language. He leaned closer to the
page, and her hair touched his cheek. He had fainted but once in his
life, and he thought he was going to faint again. He could scarcely
breathe, and his heart was pounding the blood up into his throat and
suffocating him. Never had she seemed so accessible as now. For the
moment the great gulf that separated them was bridged. But there was no
diminution in the loftiness of his feeling for her. She had not
descended to him. It was he who had been caught up into the clouds and
carried to her. His reverence for her, in that moment, was of the same
order as religious awe and fervor. It seemed to him that he had intruded
upon the holy of holies, and slowly and carefully he moved his head aside
from the contact which thrilled him like an electric shock and of which
she had not been aware.
CHAPTER VIII Several weeks went by, during which Martin Eden studied his grammar, reviewed the books on etiquette, and read voraciously the books that caught his fancy. Of his own class he saw nothing. The girls of the Lotus Club wondered what had become of him and worried Jim with questions, and some of the fellows who put on the glove at Rileys were glad that Martin came no more. He made another discovery of treasure- trove in the library. As the grammar had shown him the tie-ribs of language, so that book showed him the tie-ribs of poetry, and he began to learn metre and construction and form, beneath the beauty he loved finding the why and wherefore of that beauty. Another modern book he found treated poetry as a representative art, treated it exhaustively, with copious illustrations from the best in literature. Never had he read fiction with so keen zest as he studied these books. And his fresh mind, untaxed for twenty years and impelled by maturity of desire, gripped hold Martin Eden page 30 Martin Eden page 32 |